Step on a crack...

I’m not in the mood to roughhouse this morning due to both a rotten night’s sleep and a remarkably sore back. So when Danger Mouse threw herself on the floor in front of me demanding, “Tickle me!” I said no. Not this morning.

“Why not?” she asked, tugging at my arm.

“Because, honey, my back really hurts this morning.”

She dropped my arm like she’d been burned.

“Is it broked?” she asked timidly.

“Broken, not broked,” I laughed. “And no. It’s just sore, and I don’t want to roughhouse today.”

She skulked away. I thought she was just sulking, but then I heard her crying over the baby monitor. So I schlepped upstairs to see what her problem was and found her sitting at the top of the stairs. Before I could a word to her, she wailed out with, “I didn’t mean to!!”

All sorts of horrors were flashing before my eyes. Which would it be? An overflowing toilet? Towels soaking in the bathtub? Crayon on the wall? All the clothes taken out of the closet and their hangers used to form a ‘barrel of monkey’s’ like line?

Well, no. Turns out she, and she alone, is responsible for my sore back.

She was stepping on cracks yesterday. Even though Eldest had told her that if you step on a crack you’ll break your mother’s back, she (and Boo Bug) had been jumping from grout-line to grout-line in the hall as part of their Princesses Avoiding Alligators game.

Not only stepping, but jumping on cracks. No wonder my back is so sore this morning!

I think she’s mostly bought my explanation that her stepping on, around or over grout has nothing to do with the state of my back. I’m pretty sure she understands that my back is likely sore because I insisted on trying to reorganize the closet yesterday by myself, instead of waiting for Daddy to be home to help me with the heavier / higher up bits.

But right now, she is trying to walk up the hall without stepping on any grout…just in case…