Priceless Pasta

Early this afternoon, C got into the pantry and found an open box of uncooked ziti noodles. After telling him "no" and "put those back" about three or four times, he disappeared into the other room, so I thought it was safe to turn my back to the pantry. I was wrong. He had disappeared into the other room to get his sand bucket (never been used for sand). He proceeded to pour all the ziti noodles into the bucket.

My first thought was to fuss at him. After all, that was a "good 44 cents' worth" of food that he had gotten germs all over and that I would not be able to cook to feed the family. And then I thought about the mess that he would likely make with them that I was going to have to clean up. Albeit, he did not drop even the first noodle on the ground!

I chose to react on the outside differently than I was feeling on the inside. I wanted to shout; I wanted to yell; I wanted to grab everything from him and put it back in its rightful place; I wanted to throw away the "ruined" noodles and have a slight pity party about how my child was not minding me.

Instead, I did the opposite. I hugged him, sat down on the kitchen floor with him, dug my hands into his bucket of noodles, and made the loudest noice I possibly could, swirling the pasta around, picking it up and letting it fall back against itself and the bucket, and pouring it from hand to hand. He loved it, and it was a wonderful time of mommy/son bonding. He even decided it was a time that HE could use to teach Mommy about counting and sharing!

So what if I can't serve that pasta tonight? (OK -- I probably could because I would be boiling it long enough that it would likely kill the germs, but I'm not going to....) So what if I did not intend to have spent less than 50 cents on a toy that wasn't really a toy? It's like those credit card commercials -- that time with my son really was priceless.