Me: “Please do NOT play in the water hose. You are coming back inside in fifteen minutes and I don’t want to give you a bath right now. Don’t get wet.”
Amy: “Okay.”
Me: “I need you to repeat what I just said so I know that you understand.”
Amy: “We can’t play in the hose cause we hafta come inside in fifteen minutes.”
Me: Evan can’t play in the hose either. Don’t ask him to turn on the hose so you can say it wasn’t you. Understand?”
Amy: “Yep.”

I walked inside the house, picked up a stack of folded clothes and carried them to a bedroom. It took all of five minutes to put the clothes away. I walked back in the living room and picked up another stack of clothes. I glanced out the front window. Amy and Evan had stripped down to their shorts and were completely covered in dirt. While Evan threw clumps of dirt at the car, Amy was concentrating very hard on the hole she was digging in the middle of the yard with a shovel. I opened the front door and asked Amy what she thought she was doing. The small child with a glob of grass in her hair smiled and said, “I’m not getting wet.”