The crazy one.

Every large family has one of these children. I mean that silly little goofball who is always getting him/herself into trouble. The curious little cat that doesn't learn the first time. In my family that person is my sister. There are so many great stories to tell about her, especially from when she was a child. She is an adult now, and it is both wonderful and sad to realize that. But, it is a blast to reminisce - and when talking about my sister... there is a lot to laugh about and even more to be thankful about.

Here are a few highlights from her childhood:

~ Our old house was built a little strangely. The front door was on the second story, to the side of the house, but there was a "side door," if you will, on the front of the house, close to the road. Behind that door, which stayed locked at all times, was our playroom. It was a huge room, the size of the entire second story, where we kept all of our toys. I was nine, my brother must have been six and my sister would have been about one and a half. My grandma lived across the street and my brother and I would frequently visit her. The problem was that the street was pretty busy in the summer because the only public pool in town was right up the road from us. My mom would walk us across the street because she was terrified that something would happen to us. One day, my sister learned to unlock the playroom door while my mother was walking my brother and I across the street. She turned around to find S, my sister, standing on the side of the road trying to cross the street, while cars were whizzing by. Thankfully, she listened to my mom who was screaming "Stay there! Don't move! Mommy's coming right now."

~ Around the age of two, my sister would frequently throw tantrums. HUGE tantrums. She would go into her room, take ALL of her clothes out of the closet and dresser, pile them in front of the bedroom door and say she was moving out. She would usually fall asleep in the big pile of clothes and be just fine when she woke up.

~ Again, around two, she came to the realization that women shave their legs. She happened upon one of my mother's razors in the bathroom and we found her in the bathtub, shaving her legs with no soap or water. She had a few cuts, but thankfully she was just fine.

~ Going back in time a little bit more, when she was only one, my mom turned around while she was mopping the kitchen floor to find my sister with her head in the bucket of soapy water, blowing bubbles.

~ Another one year old story. My sister found and swallowed a penny. We had no idea what was wrong with her except that she was acting really sleepy all of a sudden and was struggling to breathe. We called my Grandma and she brought over a bulb syringe (why, I don't know... but thank God she did). She syringed my sister's nose and somehow it made her spit up the penny.

~ In kindergarten, my dad would pick my sister up from school. One day, he arrived to find my sister with huge scabs all over her face. My dad asked how they got there and she answered, "I was trying to erase my face." She had rubbed a pencil eraser around on her face and left those horrible marks. They cleared up pretty quickly.

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There are SO many other stories I could share about my sister. But these are some of my favorites. I love her to pieces and I am so thankful that none of those crazy moments hurt her severely or resulted in some horrible trauma. She is still very mischevious and has a tendency to get herself into trouble - even though she is an adult. But, that's who she is. And that's a big reason why I love her.