"I don't want the hand to brush me anymore."

That sounded ominous even as it came out of my mouth, but I will relate the story anyway. Do not be frightened. My son had found a hand, as boys sometimes do, and brought it over to me. He then began to brush my hair with it, as one might do when one comes across a hand. As he did this, he chuckled softly. After a few moments, I could take no more of this strange behavior and said what I needed to say to end this. Reluctantly, my son ceased the peculiarity and the hand was never seen again.

"Don't use your tongue to wipe your nose."

We have some friends whose youngest has the same impressive yet equally icky ability as my oldest to touch her nose with her tongue. While this trait can sometimes, somehow, come in handy, it mostly works best in "Hey, look what I can do!" situations. But I guess that really depends on who is doing it and who is watching. Anyway, apparently aforementioned sweetie pie had a runny nose the other day and our dad friend happened to look over at the exact moment of her using her tongue to, well, clean things up. He calmly made the above statement, then simply followed it up with another straightforward directive: "Go get a tissue." And that was that.

"You cannot use a paintbrush to clean the toilet."

While I appreciate your enthusiasm for helping out, we must be clear on some key things before we continue to 'work' together:

The first I just mentioned.

The second is that you cannot wipe wet paint off the walls with a towel.

The third is that when you are vacuuming and the vacuum suddenly makes an ear-piercing howl, you cannot keep vacuuming.

And the last (for now) is that you cannot use the same disinfecting wipe to clean the silverwear that you just used to clean the floor.

Now, I understand that these seem a bit restrictive and discouraging but I will gladly show you all the ways you can help out around the house. And little one, please understand that I enjoy your aid immensely and absolutely love having you right by my side as we scrub and wash and spray our way to a cleaner house.

"Try not to jump on people's faces with your feet."

This is one of my more astute statements, I must admit. One can never get too redundant with children.

"It's not his fault you're sticking your arm in his face."

Did you follow that? I'm not positive I did, but it applied perfectly to what was going on in the back of the van a few days ago. Or was it weeks ago? Anyway, I hear my girlie loudly protest to her older brother about touching her arm, so I look back to get an idea of what is really going on. What I witness is her sticking her arm right in front of his face, him moving it out of the way, and her telling him to stop touching her. When she sees me she complains about how he won't stop pushing her. Sorry sweet pea, I know you're bored and this is somehow some sort of entertainment for you, but your brother is actually being quite patient and I'm not sure I would be as gracious, so find another way to pass the time or else you might just have to skip the next super fun activity we have planned (which, at this point, I cannot recall, but I'm positive it was amazingly cool). After I make my eloquent statement, I turn around and hope for the best. Not much else I felt I could do while going 70 mph on the freeway.