Sweet and Sour

This afternoon I stood on my front porch, shaded my eyes from the sun and watched my two adorable kids walking beside one another, picking up rocks in the field beside our house. "This is fun," exclaimed Cooper, as he deposited a rock into the small blue plastic pail that McKenna was holding. "I know, this is fun," responded McKenna, "We can do this a lot this summer."
I couldn't help but take in the sweetness of that moment. Seeing them play together, listening to them carry on an actual conversation. It did my heart good.
Too bad it didn't last. A few minutes later as Earl and I stood in the backyard with a tape measure between us, desperately trying to decide on the right spot for our new swing set, the kids began their wrestling match. I'm not sure what it is about the backyard that makes them want to role around on the ground like pigs. "We're fighting," said Cooper as he wrapped his arms around McKenna, shoved the full weight of his body into her and much to her delight (oddly enough) dropped her to the ground. Soon they were up and at it again in another part of the yard. I hope the neighbors could hear their laughter because I'm sure just the sight of it probably would have made them wonder a bit.
But the real icing on the cake happened just a few minutes ago in the bathtub. The kids wanted to play and soak for a little while. So, I headed just across the hall to the laundry room to fold a few towels. Within seconds I heard wails coming from McKenna. When I asked her what on earth she was crying about she responded with the following statement which must be recorded : "Well, he was just splashing me and it's not my fault but he made me slap him two times"....(insert high pitched sobs here).
You can imagine what I was thinking while effectively trying to contain my own laughter....he MADE you slap him not once, but two times. I'm trying to picture that. Like, did your hand just fly up and land on the side of his face...not once, but twice. Because hey, if that really happens I'm going to try that the next time I'm at work and someone really peeves me off. I'll just tell my boss, "Hey, he made me slap him two times."
So folks, there is no sweet ending to my blog post tonight. No cute little saying or picture for you to conjure up in your head. Unless of course the vision of "he made me slap him" makes you laugh like I did.
And by the way, I should probably clarify that I'm not exactly sure what she meant by "slap" because Cooper just looked at me bewildered as if to say, "Mom, has she finally lost it?" Oh, my poor sweet boy, you ain't seen nothing yet!