Little m Long a

Yesterday was a long day.  Inordinately long.  I would probably even go so far as to say that there were extra minutes inserted somewhere between the hours of 10:00 am and 1:30 pm.  As the week draws to an end, fatigue rears it’s ugly head around our house and no one seems immune, myself included.  While the kids will bound from their beds bright eyed and jubilant on a Monday morning filled with the anticipatory excitement that a new week holds for them, by Thursday and Friday it’s a bit more like trying to get the uninvited, hung over drunkard who showed up at your party last night to get his naked ass off your couch and out of your house.

On Monday I’ll hear something like, “Good morning, Daddy! We love you!  It’s gonna be a great day!”

By Thursday, it’s pretty much, “Mmmmmfff. Wwwwhhhmmm. I don’t want to get up! I’m tired!”  All in that high pitched only a dog can hear it whine that I’m sure we have all experienced.  If you’ve got a toddler, the tone is burned into your brain and on an endless replay loop like some sort of bad 80′s song.  Try as you may, you can not get it to go away.  And just when you think you’ve got it out of your head the most  insignificant occurrence restarts the cycle.  It’s maddening.

I feel certain that much of my quandry with the time space continuum yesterday was due to my own lack of sleep.  There is a direct correlation between my fatigue level and my tolerance level.  If I’m well rested, heck, even adequately rested there are no limits to how much insanity I can tolerate.  My wife would argue that I am the instigator of much of the chaos around here.  I’ve got no defense.  One of my favorite games is “Hide and Scare” a sick twist on an otherwise benign childhood game where the object is to scare the pants off of the seeker.  Good times.

On the flip side….on those days that I’ve had less than acceptable shut eye, and trust me on this, if there’s anything I’ve learned as a parent it is that you really don’t need as much sleep as you think you do, five hours seems to be the acceptable magic number for me, God forbid you should spill your juice at the breakfast table.  What ensues is the incoherent ravings of a lunatic about how inconsiderate and unappreciative the whole lot of you are.  “What is so hard about drinking from a cup?  You’ve been doing it every day, several times a day for over 4 years!  Did something happen overnight that would cause you to completely lose all muscle coordination?  Juice doesn’t just grow on trees! OK, well it does kind of come from trees.  But we don’t own those trees.  I am sick and tired of cleaning up your messes!  Aaarrgh!!!”

Honestly, most of that conversation takes place in my head.  The kids usually hear the “Aaarrgh” part at the end, though.  But there’s a look in my eyes and on my face that I’m totally sure the kids fear.  They know.  Zoë has even started using one of my lines.  “Did you get up on the other side of the bed today?”  She never can seem to get a quote exactly right.  She’s always got to embelish.

So yesterday’s “straw?” you may be asking.  The markers .  The kids have ready access to the color drawer and had decided to start a little art project yesterday morning as I was cleaning the kitchen after breakfast.  I’m not quite finished when I notice a green trail from the dining table into the study.  It was almost as if they were afraid the’d get lost and felt it necessary to mark a return path.  Actually, my boy Z handed a marker to his baby sister who crawled with said marker in hand to the other room.  Hence, the marked trail.  And she, being of an industrious mind without ready access to paper decided that the next best option would be her twin brother.  That was of course after she ran out of open skin on her own hands.  And where was Z? My boy?  My buddy?  Mommy’s Golden Child?  Standing right next to his little sister head tilted ever so slightly totally absorbed in thought.  It was as if he were standing in front of Dali’s The Persistence of Memory trying to get into the artist’s head.  See what he was seeing as he created a masterpiece.

Needless to say, I snapped.  “Aaaarrgh!  What are you thinking?”  I can’t hit my kids anymore.  Family services said after the last time that they would start taking children.  I’m only kidding.  They said they would take me.  Really,
I kid.  I don’t hit my kids.  Really.  I don’t.  So I took a huge, deep breath, counted to ten, a few times, and told the kids to go to their room while I cleaned up the twins.  The counting thing really does work.

Then I got to thinking.  They are just going to sit up in their room and get bored and eventually go to sleep.  I decided that they needed more of a punishment than that.  So I made them do the absolute worst thing imaginable, at least in the mind of a four year old and a soon to be three year old.  I marched them back downstairs and made them clean up the playroom.  There was weeping and gnashing of teeth.  I’m also quite sure that there was rending of garments.  Bingo!  Punishment had been meted out.

You see, this past fall we carpeted one of the rooms in our basement and converted it into a sweet, and I do mean SWEET playroom.  The only way I can really get the kids to keep it clean is by way of threats.  I remind the kids about how cool their playroom is and let them know that if they can’t keep it clean I’ll just throw out all of the toys and make it “Daddy’s Special Room.”   The room is laid out perfectly for the media room I have always dreamed of.  To see it filled with Thomas the Train and Hot Wheels, Barbies, Little People and all manner of stuffed animals literally breaks my heart.

The resolve of a four year old boy can be quite astonishing.  After what seemed like hours of begging and pleading to come back upstairs (it was about 20 minutes) and not having picked up a single toy Z took a stand.  “Dad.  I don’t want a playroom.”  How in the world am I supposed to deal with that?  I should have known better.  This is the same little boy that will forgo chocolate cake for desert if it means he has to eat his green beans.  Even if you put the cake in front of him and eat it yourself.  He’ll just politely say, “No thanks.  Now may I be excused from the table?”

I never realized how good the acoustics in that room were.  It really is SWEET!  Thanks, Z for taking a stand.

I’m kidding.  I helped the kids clean up the playroom and we all lived happily ever after. Until the next load of straw is delivered.  Speaking of……”Aaaarrgh!”  I gotta go.  I hear water running.