Now that it has been over two weeks since the incident I can't laugh about it yet but I think I can write calmly about it.
Lately it seems that my kids internal programming has been switched to Destruction Mode. An example: Conner smeared sunscreen all over our back porch, my flowers and zucchini plants (apparently plants don't appreciate being protected from the sun because the leaves died that had sunscreen on them died), then he smeared sunscreen all over our living room (toys, carpet, couch), he used a hanger to enlarge a hole in the wall (which Alan had conveniently started for him), he dumped buckets of dirt on my zucchini and then stepped on it (the zucchini is still alive, believe it or not), Alan pulled our coat hooks off the wall while trying to pull his coat down, ect.....
So, a couple of weeks ago we watched two boys overnight while their mom went to the hospital to have her baby. My boys loved having a sleep over (they stayed awake very late and woke up very early and that probably contributed to the problems we had during the day) and playing with them that morning. After the friends left Alan and Conner were very hyper. They were constantly fighting and bugging each other so I decided we needed to get out of the house. I told them to put their shoes on while I used the bathroom and then we would go to the library and get new books. While I am in the bathroom I can hear loud banging noises coming from our living room and then I heard glass shatter. Uh-oh. I rushed out to find this:
The door was closed and Conner was sitting on one side of it, surrounded by glass and laughing hysterically. Alan was sitting on the other side with a shocked/horrified expression on his face. Micah was right beside Alan, making a beeline for the jagged hole in the door. I lost my temper. I was so mad I couldn't even form coherent sentences for a minute. I asked what had happened and Alan told me he and Conner were play fighting, and Conner was laughing at him, so he kicked the door (with his bare foot). I sent Alan to his room, I put Conner on the couch and told him if he got off he was in big trouble and I moved Micah way back (luckily he was a very slow crawler then). I then swept up all the glass, and vacuumed and mopped. Alan came and showed me a miniscule cut on his ankle so we put a bandaid on it and I sent him back to his room. Amazingly, that was the only injury sustained. Thankfully Reed called home at the beginning of this escapade. He said he just felt like he needed to call and I ranted and raved for a little while and that helped me calm down quite a bit. Reed came home for lunch early and we both talked to Alan and Conner. We told Alan he was going to have to give us all the money he had saved to buy fireworks, plus he was going to do a lot of extra chores to pay us back. We took the door off its hinges and to a glass place and $40 later it was fixed. Grrrr. What really made me mad was that this isn't the first glass thing Alan has broken. He threw a ball a few months ago and knocked the glass covering to his bedroom light off. After that he did a few extra chores and we discussed how glass is very breakable, and how we need to be careful with it. Apparently the lesson didn't sink in. So now he is doing A LOT of extra chores including weeding the garden, cleaning the bathroom, helping with laundry and washing the walls (Conner helps sometimes):
The whole day was just a wreck: Alan woke Micah up from his nap, Conner threw tantrum after tantrum, as we were trying to decide what to order for dinner (Reed had a $20 certificate that needed used that day) Conner peed his pants on the carpet while laughing, then after I cleaned that up he pooped in his pants, the kids seemed to be fighting and screaming all the time, we didn't end up ordering any food because by that time I was in tears so I think I made PB and J sandwiches. And of course it happened on the day that Reed had to work late.
That night as I got ready for bed I decided that it had been a day for the record book so I wrote about it in my journal. After I was done I felt like I needed to think about the good things that had happened and here was my list:
- Conner said "nake you Mom" a lot.
- Alan passed his swim lessons.
- Alan offered to give me a back massage and make me dinner (as long as he didn't have to cook it, he said).
- Alan picked me a bouquet of flowers from the backyard:
So, even though it was a really rough day it wasn't all bad. I figure now I can look back on this post and think "Oh, yeah, today wasn't really that bad at all."
Anyone know how to turn the Destruction button off on little boys?
Here is Conner's ride:
Here is Alan's ride:
Notice that there are no training wheels on his bike:
On Thursday, July 14th, I decided to take the boys to the church parking lot and see if I could help Alan learn to ride his bike without training wheels. I read in Janae's blog about how she taught her girls to ride by letting them ride their little brother's bike so I tried the same thing with Alan. I took the training wheels off Conner's bike. Then Alan got on and I ran beside him and held him for about 10 feet and then I let go and away he went. I jogged beside him and when he realized he was doing it by himself he got very wide eyes and said "stop me, stop me, stop me". He eventually got stopped. We practiced for about a half an hour and by then he could ride the length of the parking lot but he would just drag his feet to stop himself. That night when Reed came home we told him about our adventure and then we all went back to the church parking lot. This time I took the training wheels off of Alan's bike and had him practice on that. He mastered the braking part and then he practiced and practiced and got so that he could start himself without us giving him a push. Hooray! He learned so fast, it was a lot of fun to watch. While he was doing that Conner was practicing on his little bike. He got so that he could ride at a brisk walking pace (before it was a very slow walking pace, with many pauses). Micah was pretty patient with just sitting in his stroller watching everyone.
