With the ever-delightful friend known as morning sickness happily staying for an extended visit, I’ve spent much more time on the couch than I typically do (all day vs. no day). The children, meanwhile, have been doing massive amounts of chores that I have codified into lists for each of the older three.
This has several advantages (for me).
1) They get to clean up the gigantic piles of toys, laundry, crayons, sippy cups, stale bread, etc. that they relocate from their original habitats to the far reaches of the house. The clean their rooms every morning (and every morning they are disasters and need it) and tidy the rest of the house every afternoon and evening, by which time it invariably needs tidying again.
2) They get to learn the fine art of correct dishwasher loading (and unloading).
3) Since they wipe the bathrooms down every morning, said areas never get too slimy.
4) The clean, folded laundry that they stuff back into their hampers still folded at least was arranged and taken up to their rooms by them and not me.
5) Spending half the day doing chores keeps them busy so I don’t have to listen to them fighting and coming up with new and more creative ways to torture one another as often.
6) By the time they’re done with their chores (that I don’t have to remind them 5,397 times to do since it’s all written down on the papers that they only lose fourteen times a day), they’re so tired of working that they usually go find some nice way to play together for awhile. Also, they’re too scared to come near me to ask four times each if they can watch a movie.
Hehe. I feel evil yet remarkably clever! Plus the evilness is somewhat mitigated by the feeling that it’s good for them to actually take care of their own stuff and the vague feeling that a whole bunch of old anecdotal George Washington Cherry Tree type of stories probably support this and aren’t prehistoric anecdotes good things to base your parenting decisions on anyway?
So last week after they finally completed their massive chore list, they decided to celebrate by “partying ’til we’re purple” and then discussed the many ways that they could accomplish this. Oddly, most of them involved massive bruising instead of the more obvious markers and were thus ultimately rejected.
Next on the agenda was music choice, since clearly a party upstairs in your little sister’s bedroom requires appropriate music. Also, since I made them bring the card table back downstairs that was going to hold the drinks that I wouldn’t let them have on the carpet, boogieing was the only remaining component of the party.
Georgie went upstairs to look through George’s CD stash, and soon came back out to holler in his usual overly loud voice, “Mom, where’s the Queen CD?” The Queen CD? Yes, this is my eight year old son blithely requesting music from the ’70′s rock opera band that brought the world “We Will Rock You,” “We Are the Champions,” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” along with many other songs that you would undoubtedly recognize. Thank you, my dear husband, for introducing them to “culture”…..
Well, they couldn’t find the Queen CD so then they started looking for the crazy pirate music CD that their Auntie Masha gave them (songs on it like “Scurvy” and “Nelly the Elephant”). Since that CD had also escaped, they started looking for Jamie Soles, which is very mild, folk-song-y, Christian kids music. Hmmm, let’s see… Queen or Jamie Soles. Hahahaha.
They finally settled upstairs with the soundtrack to PeeWee’s Great Adventure, which is frenetic score by Danny Elfman. I spent the next half an hour wondering if the ceiling was going to come crashing down due to five children jumping around “dancing” upstairs, but it didn’t sound like any purpling was occurring and the couch I was on wasn’t directly beneath the ceiling so I was just thankful that they were happy and out of my hair.
Today after lunch I told them they could go upstairs and watch a movie in my room (so I could take a nap downstairs, thus positioning myself between them and the front door lest anyone try to escape or burglars try to waltz in and steal our peanut-butter encrusted possessions).
Naturally this was the universal signal for a large fight over whose turn it was to pick a movie. Georgie decided that since Anika stole his turn last week (because he was in his room crying over being forced to do the horror known as “borrowing” in multiple-digit subtraction), today was going to be his turn. However, he also unwisely told Trinity that if she drew a picture of herself catching Lex Luthor, they would watch Superman which was what she wanted to do.
So she’s upstairs drawing herself and Lex, and from all the way downstairs I can hear Georgie’s brain looking for an escape clause.
“I know, let’s have a bravery test, girls,” he tells them upstairs in my bedroom.
Hmmm, a bravery test. This sounds to me like he’s come up with some new and clever way to get them to volunteer for torture so that they can then earn the “prize” of getting to watch the movie he wants to watch.
“Georgie…” I holler at him up the stairwell. He comes out looking innocent. “No bravery test.”
“But Mom, I wanted to watch The Mummy.” Hehe. Two points for me. Helps being an expert in Early Childhood Manipulation.
ME: “You promised Trinity you would watch Superman if she drew that picture.”
GEORGIE: “But I don’t want to watch Superman.”
{insert further arguing dialogue here}
ME: “Too bad. A deal’s a deal. Now you forfeit your turn and it goes back to being Ani’s turn.
GEORGIE: “WHAT!!! That makes no sense at all.”
ME: “You expect everyone else to keep their bargains as long as they benefit you, but you don’t want to keep yours when it means giving someone else what you promised them.”
GEORGIE: “Oh.”
No argument to that, which of course translates to “shoot! She’s reading my mind again!” And Mom wins once more!
The girls ended up watching PeeWee’s Great Adventure (hmm, bit of a theme this week, I guess), which Georgie watched most of except for the scary part when Large Marge turns into a monster. At that point he opted to hide in the hall with my pillow until his sisters told him it was over. His younger sisters, I might add….
Thus ends this week’s episode of Juvenile Lawyers.
Rachel
Fiendish friend for effusive fun!
