Quiet+ Happy+ Kids+ Out of Mom's Sight= TROUBLE

I'm not sure when I will learn that quiet children playing upstairs does not mean that I can accomplish something in the rest of the house.  A while back, it was too quiet upstairs, and Nolan was nowhere to be found.  I looked and looked, and suddenly I heard a sound like a little mouse in Daniel's toy bin.  This is what I found:

No big deal, just kinda cute, but trapped in a baseball toy bin.  

But there have been times when poop is involved and gets quietly smeared on as many surfaces as possible, even on surfaces I never knew were possible poop-receiving surfaces.  Sneaky quiet poop smearing is the worst.  Makes for an angry mama.

Yesterday, I hear giggling and giggling and giggling.  I think the boys are just being silly in Daniel's room, and I run downstairs to throw a load of laundry in the washer.  Then I hear a thud and more giggles.  And a bigger crash and more giggles.  And finally, as I'm calmly walking upstairs to see what mess these boys have caused, I hear Daniel yelling "Waaa Whooooa, Help us.... giggle giggle."  

So I open up the bathroom door, take a step inside, slide completely across the bathroom floor waving my arms around in circles like I'm in a cartoon and fall flat on my butt.  I look at the boys, and we all just about die laughing.  We are laughing so hard no one can successfully stand, and the expectation I had of being completely ticked off by the mess I was going to have to clean up was erased in about a millisecond because of the hilarity of the three of us on this soap-covered floor.  Here is some of the chaos:

I was super grateful that all we had to clean up was soap!  

But... it reaffirmed my suspicions that Daniel will never be able to get away with anything.  He will pay fully for every mistake he makes, every mess he creates, and he will continue to be a perfectionist because of it.  There may have been a few times that he was too cute to punish-- like the time Jeff and my dad were installing new light fixtures in our kitchen, and they set the old round white one on a box on the floor.  Daniel took one look at it, ran over to it, yelled, "Ball!!!" He had a huge grin on his face when he lifted it up over his head and threw it onto the kitchen floor.  Shards of glass everywhere.  He had been so proud of that "ball."  But this is definitely not the norm for him.

Nolan, on the other hand, hardly ever gets into trouble because the darned kid just makes me laugh.  Just like Uncle Kenny has always done.  Especially when he's getting himself into trouble.  Nolan is cute when he throws a fit. It is hilarious.  He just pouts, and his whole body goes completely limp, and he flops on the floor.  Or he smacks himself in the face repeatedly, which is just hilarious.  And when he doesn't do what I'm asking him to do, it's usually because he's doing something cute like this:

Or this:

I don't know if I'll ever learn that quiet kids are "getting into trouble kids," but I have already learned that sometimes making a huge mess is just too much fun to be a punishable offence.

And... if you've never tried pouring an entire bottle of liquid soap on your bathroom floor.  It's a hoot.  You can borrow my toddler to dump it on your floor sometime.

Happy bubbling;)