Adventures in Motherhood

Tonight I realized for the first time what a dangerous thing pockets can be in the hands of a 4 year old boy. I was switching a batch of laundry and sitting in the bottom of my washing machine was a small glowing green thing. I reached down and pulled out a couple of little green alien toys. Thinking that I was lucky that this was a batch of darks and thus washed in cold water and not hot, I yelled for my son to come and see what I found. Instead of being impressed with me for rescuing his aliens from drowning he demanded to know where the other two were. I hurried to stop the dryer and pulled out his pants and shorts to look through the pockets. I turned up another alien and a dinosaur while my son insisted that there had been at least four aliens, possibly five. After a few minutes of looking he started to insist that the fourth alien had to have melted in the washer. To avoid the tears pooling in his big blue eyes I started pulling out all the laundry piece by piece and shaking them out, while lecturing him about the importance of taking everything out of his pockets before putting them in the hamper. (I don't know how well the lecture sunk in, his dad still leaves pens and reciepts in his pockets.) Finally out of the sleeve of my shirt went flying the fourth alien! The tradgedy of having a melted alien in my laundry averted we all lived happily ever after.... for the next five minutes anyway.