My 15 minutes

I stole a moment this morning to take a relaxing bath...

Evy and Penny were awake.  Evy was doing her homework.  Penny was playing with kittens while drinking a sippee.  Yes, they're finally big enough to defend themselves, so I left the kittens out with the kids.  Seren was asleep at this point.  I had a half hour before I had to get everyone ready for getting Evy out the door to school.

About halfway into my bath, I could hear screaming over our very loud exhaust fan in our bathroom.  I concluded that Seren must be up and about.  I also concluded that the crying I heard from Penny must have been only a tantrum because Evy had not unlocked my bedroom door to come knock on my bathroom door and inform me of a disaster.  At least, that's what I was hoping.

Terrible thoughts filled my mind, like a boogeyman fills a child's closet when the unknown becomes the catalyst of fear.  It was at this point that I wished I had the Tween & Toddler version of an old buddy's recently developed electronic teenage pager system.  This electronic system is designed to page teenagers over any electronic device being used in the house, like a laptop, smartphone, or other device they may be involved in, to get their attention.  What I need is the Voice of God, basically an indoor speaker system like most rich people have running throughout their houses (or like the ones schools have) where I can just tap a button and inform my kids that I can see what they are doing and they'd better behave.  As a person with an accounting background, I quickly dismissed this idea as one too expensive to implement.  However, an affordable version would be two-way walkie-talkies.  I can see it now:

Me: "Evy, what's going on in there?"
Evy: "PENNY IS PULLING A LEG OFF OF A KITTEN AND SEREN IS HOLDING THE OTHER ONE WITH THE SCISSORS!  IT ALREADY HAS A BALD SPOT FROM WHERE SHE CUT ITS HAIR!"
Me: "SEREN! Put the cat DOWN! Put the scissors AWAY!"
Silence.
Me: "Evy, did she put the scissors away?"
Silence.
Me: "EVY!" I start to get out of the bathtub.
"Hi Mommy," I hear over the walkie.
"Seren?"
"Yes," Seren says in the sweetest little voice.
"Seren, did you put away the scissors?"
"Uh-hmmm (yes)," she says in her sweet voice.
"Did you put down the cat?"
"Nooooo..." she says as I briefly hear water running in the background.
"Seren, put the cat down and stop playing in the sink!"
"But, he's getting a bath right now..." sounds of screaming cat briefly make it through.
"SEREN! PUT HIM DOWN!"
Silence.
I grab my towel and run into the other room to find water everywhere, but the cat safely got away.  However, the walkie-talkie sitting at the bottom of the sink was not so fortunate. End of two-way intercom.

Really, as this played through my head, I realized that ignorance was probably the most blissful.  However, I couldn't shake the proverbial boogeyman so I got out of the tub and got dressed as fast as possible.  I turned off the exhaust fan and didn't hear a sound.  As anyone with kids knows, silence is the best and worst sound you can hear in a house full of small children. 

I cautiously open the door of my bedroom and step into the hallway.  I hear sweet little voices coming from their room where they all sit happily reading to kittens as they cuddle them.  In this case, silence was golden.  Everyone survived the fifteen minutes I took to feel like a human being again. ;)