Chaos can be Fun

Last night we had some people over for dinner.  My parents and another couple with grown children.  They can never get enough of my children's "cuteness."  All of the things that I "get after" my kids about, they love.  The wife always tells me how much I'll miss it all when they're gone, how she struggles with loneliness now that her youngest daughter's graduated from college and moved to a different state, how quickly this time goes. 

And they are game to do ANYTHING my kids ask!  I'm in the kitchen last night fixing the appetizers and I hear all of this hooping and hollering from the living room.  I go in and Oldest has convinced them both to "jump the couch" with her.  As in, take a running leap over the armrest and land on the couch.  She and Youngest showed it off a few times and the next thing I know these people in their 50s are doing it too! 

I come in, a bit agog, and they're like, "your kids are so fun!" 

Here I am on the final stretch of summer.  You know, that stretch where "kids" and "fun" can be mutually exclusive terms on some of these hot, August days when all of the "good" ideas were exhausted a month ago. 

So it was nice to see and hear that sometimes when kids "do the darndest things," it really is OK.  They're likely not totally appalling the older generation.  They're probably making the older generation smile a little, wishing they had these days back. 

And "jumping the couch?"  It really IS fun and is, in part, why we don't get new furniture.  Kids jumping a new couch would get a very different response from me than kids jumping a 14 year old couch.  That's just one of the Great Truths in our house.