The wording's a bit off, but the sentiment is still there.

One of my favorite childhood memories is the one where my dad, exasperated with my younger sister, decided to "switch roles" with her one evening at dinner. Therefore, instead of seeing my little unruly sister squirm, wiggle, put her legs on the chair, her feet on the table, her elbows in her supper, it was instead my father, who is 6'4". You can imagine the delighted squeals of young girls as they watched this normally quite stoic, proper dad exaggerate the common inappropriate actions of a 6 year old.


I don't know if it accomplished his goal, but I am sure it helped us realize how ridiculous we looked to our parents at times. (I think we got to play the parents, too, so there was a fair amount of scolding going on as well.)


Anyhow, off and on I repeat this at times with my own three year old. This morning, for instance, he came downstairs and informed me that he was going to take ONE MORE nap before he went outside with me. I dramatically laid down on the couch, squishing his legs, and explained in an exasperated tone that I, too, needed a nap.


But almost immediately I began to squirm. Kick my legs in circles, lift my head up and down, and sing songs loudly. Each of these antics was met with "You stop that!" or "Lay down now!" Also? We are at the "why" stage, where each of my statements, questions, or directives is met with "Why?" So, of course I had to throw a couple of these in there.

"Put your leg down!"

"Why?"

"Because I don't want you to do that!"

This went on for a number of minutes until I informed him that I simply could not sleep.

This was the last straw.
"No, we have to TAKE a NAP."
"Why?"
"Because God said we always take a nap!"

Now, I have never used this reasoning with him, but I think I am going to start.
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We had another loud, jarring thunderstorm in the middle of the night a few days ago. Although neither Phil nor I act afraid during these storms (although admittedly my stomach sometimes does turn flip-flops during the closest lightning strikes) Ryan absolutely abhors storms. He talks about them constantly "Is it going to storm tonight?" or "Do you see that cloud over there? It looks like rain!"
So, when this huge storm hit as we were going to bed that night, Ryan was quite concerned. After much comforting and coercion, he finally went to sleep. The thunder had died down and he was exhausted from the worry of it all.
The next morning at breakfast, I started up a casual conversation with him about it.
"So, that was quite a storm last night, eh?"
"Yeah mom! It was a big one! A big TOMATO* storm!"

Did you know Iowa has tomato storms? Because if so, I would be happy. My tomato plants wilted so badly that I had to pull the plants after only two batches of salsa. This, compared to last year, when we picked tomatoes for more than 52 quarts of whole tomatoes, three batches of salsa, and one dryer full (for dried tomatoes). Thankfully, the bumper crop of tomatoes last year will more than sustain us one more year. If it's one thing I am learning about gardening and canning, it's that you take it when you get it. You never know what the next year will hold...draught, floods, late frosts.
Now, if there happened to be chocolate storms, that might even be a bit better. That's the stuff of dreams, right there.
*(I suppose he meant tornado, but don't worry grandma's, there were no funnel clouds).