The Moving Animals

Yesterday I came home from work and the kids were waiting for me a the back door, with very serious looks on their faces. Dressed in jammies (already) with wet hair from the pool and rosy cheeks from standing by the fire, they stood there with big eyes telling me they were scared. Scared of what, I asked. Our animals are moving, said Asher. Then, in turn, they began telling me of how their stuffed animals had a way of moving from here to there without anyone moving them. I tried to explain that they couldn't move, that it was impossible and that someone had to have done it. They denied that outright and I couldn't convince them otherwise.

So, we were getting ready for bed, and Jamie told Avery to bring all her stuffed animals from the living room (where there was a pile of about 20 of them) and take them into her room. She clearly didn't want to either because she was scared of them at this point or she was being lazy. So, I promised her that she could leave them there all night long, and that if we woke up in the morning that if ANY of them had moved at all that I would clean them up for her. If they hadn't moved, no TV before school AND she had to clean them up. She agreed. I made Jamie pinky promise me not to move them anywhere because the kids really did seem scared- although it would have been kind of fun to mess with them a little.  

This morning we got up and thankfully none of them had moved. Except the horse. The freakin' horse. I have NO idea how it moved, and I'm not even sure it did but it totally freaked them out. And now Avery is trying to convince me *I* have to clean them up. I said that Charley probably moved it and she said that no matter how it got moved, it moved so I need to clean it up.  I asked her if I really had to and she said "1) the horse moved, and 2) the horse moved, and 3) the horse MOVED so yes you have to." I couldn't quit laughing, because I have no idea how she learned to enumerate things like that.

Needless to say, I'm headed home in a couple hours and I imagine I'll be cleaning up a boatload of stuffed animals off the floor.  But who knows, maybe by then they'll have made their way to her bedroom all by themselves.