As you stand at the kitchen sink washing produce for a salad, you hear him squeal with delight and know he’s up to something. What was a gentle rain only a minute ago is now a full-on shower and you step to the back porch and call him inside. He enters covered in mud, as 7-year-old boys often are, and you’re grateful you have an actual mud room for him to shuck off his filthy sneakers.

You order him upstairs for an immediate bath and follow him as he runs laughing through the kitchen where he passes your teenager who sits at the built in breakfast nook sulking, doing homework.

In the open play area on the second floor, your 11-year old and her best friend choreograph another of their dance masterpieces and don’t appreciate the interruption from the muddy little brother.

Entering the bathroom off the play area, you see your 7-year-old already in the tub making a watery mess, his heap of muddy clothes on the floor. As you collect them, grateful the laundry room is only 10 feet away and not all the way downstairs, you spot the frog in the tub and realize what his delightful squeal was all about. Before he can even ask, you answer, “No, you cannot keep the a frog as a pet.”