Rocks Part 1
At 5:10pm after 5 hours of crying and whining Mster told me her stomach hurt ("you think"?). It just happened to be dinnertime for the kiddies (special solo dinner for them since I was going out for the night) and so she came up and looked at her dinner and looked at me and said "my head hurts too. I'm just going to go to bed." So off she went to bed.
The other side of the crappy day story is that Lster wouldn't nap for me (I think he needs to go down later in the day now) and so by 5pm he was too tired to eat and only wanted saltines and apples. On any other day I probably would have said "of course you can have saltines and apples. Just get something in your belly and you'll feel better and we'll put you to bed. But after fighting with Mster for 5 hours and building my "I won't cave no matter what cause I'm the mom and you must do what I say" wall he was going to eat his dinner or eat nothing. He chose nothing and continued to whine until 5:50pm when I thought my head might pop right off of my head. I called Cster to find out where exactly on his commute home he was so I could get my shoes on and be already out the door ready for my night out only to find out he was hoping to leave the office in another 10 minutes. The cherry was on top.
All kids were immediately sent to bed. Luckily Mster was already in there. Well she was in a semi state of undress and asking for songs and other bedtime routine necesseties.
By the time Cster got home both kids were in bed so he got NOTHING of the drama of the day and a nice peaceful night in all by himself. He's set to work a real lawyers work week this week (65+ hours) so I guess he deserved it too.
Mster woke me up bright and early this morning and I just didn't have the heart to immediately send her right the basement. I also didn't have the immediate mental capacity to deal with the whining and crying. So I let her do puzzles and eat breakfast until sunrise. "Once the sun is up you're going down there".
The sun rose must faster this morning in Mster's eyes and not 10 minutes had past when I heard my name a dozen times and whining had commenced (no crying yet). After about 15 minutes had past the crying began.
This could not be happening. I struggled to help her figure out a way for the job to be not so mountainous. I know she just looked at the basement and was overwhelmed and her little 4 year old brain couldn't wrap itself around and actual finished project. Cster and I had already moved all the toys out of the way and put a little brush and dustpan for her but it wasn't working. After numerous talkings to from Cster (which sounded an aweful lot like the conversations that I had with her the day before) I thought and I thought and I thought and finally the inspiration came. Armed with masking tape I sectioned off part of the room in squares. I told her to pick up the rocks in each ssquare and that she could take the tape off once she was done a section. When she was done all the sections I would come down and make more sections for her. This was the answer.
It became a game and she did the whole basement in about a 1/2 an hour. I'm calling this a victory. I picked up a total of 0 rocks. I win.
4 comments:
Nice! Score one for creative parenting!
Has anyone told you lately you're a good mom? you are.
wow what a day. you win. I cringed just reading that.
brilliant!
Ok, so I'm catching up on your blog, and I read this post before I read the one below it. I was like, why is Mster getting sent to the basement first thing in the morning? Is that the standard routine? That's kind of weird. And then I read further and saw that she was being sent down to the basement first thing in the morning to pick up rocks. I was like, WHAT?? I know I'm not up on parenting trends, but that sounds really . . . odd. But then I read the next post, and now it all makes sense.
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