Gardening Gloves

I totally wish it was February again. Maybe I would have done better today if it had been No Buy Month. I went to Wal-Mart for a $4 watch battery. The lady was busy helping other people so to keep the kids busy, I walked the aisles. Checked back, she was gone. Walked a bit more. Came back, gave her my watch. Walked the aisles. Came back to get it, she was busy with another customer. Walked the aisles. In the end my $4 watch battery cost us a bit more than $4. All of it totally necessary stuff, right? No. We got Milk Duds (from Ben's Mother's Day gift of $1.16 to me), gardening gloves, two movies from the $5 bin for our upcoming airplane trip, light bulbs and "pretties" for Maddie's hair. I realized that was the first hair bow Maddie has ever had. Sad. She's over two and a half years old. Poor girl. If I had just waited instead of walking the aisles we'd be better off. Of course, I am glad we got the gardening gloves. We insist the kids help us with all types of work. Often we wear gloves when we work in the garden or do other things. They don't have any and try to wear adult gloves. It just doesn't work. In my attempts to preempt the next problem that seemed imminent, I explained that these gloves wer SUPPOSED to get dirty. It was okay and they should not freak out when it happened. They work-played in the front yard, weeding and playing with their gloves on and had a ball. When Maddie was ready to go inside I took her in. Eventually Ben finished working and cleaned up his weed bucket and shovel. He came inside and went in the bathroom to wash his hands. After a while, he came to me in the kitchen and asked, "Mom, where are we going to keep our gloves so I can put them away?" I told him he could keep his gloves in the basement with the grownup gloves if he wanted. As I was telling him that, I noticed he was holding his gloves all wadded up in his hand sort of akwardly. I reached out to touch them and sure enough, they were wet. He explained that he had washed them. Okay. So the message I delivered wasn't as complete and helpful as I thought. Mostly I was just surprised at the wet gloves, not mad. Then I took them to see just how wet they really were...moist or drippy. They had been wrung out pretty well after he rinsed the dirt off, but they felt weird. I rubbed them a bit before I figured out what was wrong. I was getting bubbles as I rubbed. He had not just rinsed the dirt off. He had washed them with soap. A totally logical thing to do. I hope I didn't make him feel too bad. I could see how my not so careful words hurt his feelings. I hadn't been mean or rebuking, but it was too late when I realized I hadn't been gentle. He looked crestfallen. He was doing everything he could to be the best kid possible. He even asked me where to put them away. What a GREAT kid!! I apologized to him, though I don't know if fixed the damage done.