With both babies asleep and Ellis watching a movie, I laid my tired bones down for a rest.  A few moments later, I heard footsteps on the stairs.  A small nose and two blue eyes peeked around my door. "You asleep, Mama?"

"Yes, Ellis.  I am taking a nap, but let me know if you need anything." and off he went back down the stairs.

A few moments later, I again heard his four year old feet on the stairs, this time walking past my door and heading to his room, I assumed.  Then another noise followed.  This time, it was a crinkling noise, like a packet.  I rolled out of bed and followed the noise into the guest bedroom to see Ellis framed in the mid-afternoon light streaming in the window, purple bag of cat food in hand.

"What are you doing?"

"Feeding the cats," he replied. I walked over to the window and looked out and down to see the window ledge covered in cat food, with a further spread on the gravel below.  

"Have you been throwing things out of the window?"  I didn't need a response.

-----

And so it began.  "Have you seen my cream/the remote/ Buzz Lightyear's wing?" someone would ask.  The reply was usually the same "Have you checked out of the window?" A problem.  A nuisance.  Stern talking tos and the like made no difference.

But then it was taken to a new level.  Kevin answered a knock on the door to our lovely next door neighbour. "Do you realise there are a number of clothes on your roof?" "Yes.  Kevin replied, thinking she meant that something had been thrown out of the front window onto the roof of the bay window, a common place for stray towels and jewelry. An investigation soon uncovered the entire contents of Theo's chest of drawers on the roof of the utility room, thrown out of the back window. 

A ladder was collected and the clothes retrieved, except for one forlorn reminder of the dangers of bored preschoolers with too much time and imagination.