The Naughty Leprechaun Strikes Again

The naughty leprechaun paid us a visit last night, the eve of St. Patrick's Day. Technically, it was St. Patrick's Day (the first hour of it) when he struck.  That the leprechaun was up that late and paying us a visit is a whole other topic for a blog post.

How do we know that he was in our house?  Well, other than the obvious, he made a huge mess in both of the kids' rooms. In Cal's he pulled most books off of the bookshelves and threw them all over the floor. I'm certain he didn't read any of them.  He threw Cal's dinosaurs on the floor, too, turned his big stuffed lion upside down, and tipped the chair at his desk on its side.

The leprechaun pulled stuffed animals that haven't been touched in awhile out of their home in Cal's closet and threw those on the floor, too.  And he pulled Cal's comforter half way off of his bed leaving Cal to keep warm beneath a sheet.  The leprechaun must know that Cal gets hot in the middle of the night and uncovers himself anyway -- the leprechaun's naughty, not mean.

The naughty leprechaun hit Ella's room in much the same manner, throwing books and infrequently used stuffed animals all over the floor of her bedroom.  He tipped over her garbage can and unfolded and turned upside down her foam "Mickey" chair-converted-to-bed after throwing the Mickey and Minnie pillows that had been sitting on it on, yes, the floor.

And then to top it off, the leprechaun peed his green pee in the toilet upstairs and down, (a nice touch not noticed by the kids until later this evening).

When he woke to the mess, Cal knew exactly who had done it and why.  The naughty leprechaun has visited us on past St. Patrick's Days, maybe the last 2 or 3 of them.  To be honest, it's Cal's fault that the leprechaun visited us at all last night.  All of his talk about wearing green, certainly not red, to bed that night because the leprechaun would be visiting him and the leprechaun doesn't like red -- I'm not sure, but it might make him mad? -- reminded the leprechaun that he should pay us a visit else make for one disappointed kid.  The leprechaun didn't remember in 2015 that he should visit on the eve of St. Patrick's Day.

Once he was reminded that he should pay the Leatherkids a visit, the leprechaun felt very lucky that Cal's many Lego sets had been taken away from for having made too many "sad choices" a couple of weekends before. The leprechaun would surely have been torn as to what to do with those Legos when making the mess.  Had they not been strewn all over the floor, it just wouldn't have been as convincing of a leprechaun-sized mess; had they been... well... Mommy would be picking up Legos for a month, maybe more.

Ella wasn't sure what had happened.  "Mommy, there's a mess in my room!" she declared from her room as I got ready for work this morning.  "Mommy, there's a mess in my room!" she repeated. She then made her way to our room where she stated it again.  "There's a mess in my room."  She was concerned.

"There is?" I asked, innocently.  "Hmm... I wonder if the naughty leprechaun visited your room and made a mess last night."

With just the suggestion, Ella proceeded to rattle off a bunch of statements of fact about this leprechaun about whom she really didn't know (or remember) a thing.  She does this, talk about stuff as if she's the voice of authority and experience.  There was no longer any concern in her tone, just a matter-of-factness that the leprechaun had visited her, that he made a big mess and that he's naughty and, "Mommy, will you help me?"  She needed help cleaning up the mess the leprechaun had made.

And this is rub -- the whole time the leprechaun was making the mess in the kids' rooms, he thought about the effort that would be needed to clean it up.  I... I mean, the leprechaun, does enough picking up after the kids that it's just counterintuitive that he'd purposely make a mess entirely on his own knowing full well that it would eventually have to be picked up by him... I mean, me.

I guess it's a small price to pay for the simple and terribly cheap joy it brings the kids.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!