My four year old is magnetically drawn to the dirt on our property. It's the first material that she wants to get her hands on once she's outside, and yet it's the one thing that we don't really want inside. Go figure.
She comes out in her new, clean clothes, and has this irrepressible drive to then go and baptize herself in the dirt that she can find in our yard. To me, it's very similar to how our cat initially behaves once we've let her outside. The two of them have this strong behavioral trait in common: the desire, once clean, to go out and roll around in the dirt.
Today, I told her that if she did that that I was going to have to spray her down with the water hose before she went back inside. My intention was to dissuade her from the activity, but instead it has seemed to fuel it. It's now become a game. She comes out, gets dirty. We go to the backyard. I spray her down. She goes inside, finds a towel to dry herself, stays in for a bit, then comes back outside and we repeat the process.
What fun, right? Oh yeah, and let's not slip on the tile (inside) along the way.
....And so it goes....
I let it go on for a little bit, then I put an abrupt end to this 'game'. Thank you, but daddy has had enough. :)