The Harrowing/Heartwarming Parent Moment of the Week

Many children are natural hosts or hostesses. Some have tea parties. My three are no exception. And so when I gave them a snack of pistachio nuts they chose to entertain. They had a spider party, with pistachios, in the kitchen. This pretty much involved cracking the nuts (sweet boy #1 is very good at this) and spreading the shells all over the kitchen for the spiders (spiders only eat shells) and then running around and screaming “spider party, spider party) at the top of their lungs through the artfully strewn shell pieces.

Sweet boy #2 poured a glass of water over the top of a popcorn cake that one of our staff girls brought us. They still ate it though.

Sweet boy #1 poured his orange juice into the dog’s water bowl.

I came to realize precisely why it feels like I don’t get anything done. I decided to sweep and mop our kitchen and dinning room. This requires me to be 10 feet away from the boys and not looking directly at them. So they dumped all their toys and overturned our rocking chair with wild abandon whilst I was occupied. So then I went into the living room to repair our beanbag couch and rocking chair and sensing an opportunity sweet boy #3 snatched glue out of our craft drawer, drizzled it across the newly mopped kitchen, and drove trucks through it.

The winner this week…our floor actually warped, because the boys knocked over our Christmas tree so many times and it soaked up so much spilled tree water. Next year, a Christmas bush, outside, with birds and disgruntled squirrels as decorations. Aargh!