The Adventures of Being Parents

This has been an eventful couple of days. Amy has been really busy trying to finish up a Christmas gift she has been working on all year. It's amazing how much time she spends each year on these gifts. I'm not sure many people understand the time and money she puts into it, but she feels like this is her way of showing her love.

So, for another gift, Monday, Amy went to a consignment store in Boise. While she was looking around, Baily began playing with a porcelain sink on a porcelain pedestal. Amy was later told it was valued at $500. I'm not sure that was realistic, but I'll bet you can guess what was about to happen. Of course the sink was knocked off the pedestal and both were broken beyond repair. Amy felt terrible and the store employee said that if this happened at Home Depot she would have to pay for it, but that as long as she kept shopping at their store, she wouldn't have to. Well, then she felt pressured to get something and after not being able to find what she was looking for, she purchased something expensive in its place.

That same day, Baily vacuumed up Lily's pants and I spent the evening trying to fix that. Also, our dryer started scraping and put black marks on three loads of laundry before we realized. While I worked on the vacuum, Baily and Bethy went into our bathroom and took turns pouring full glasses of water on eachothers bare feet. By the time I found them, the entire floor was a half inch deep in water and the carpet by the doorway was soaked. Tuesday wasn't much better. After deciding we had spent too much on presents this year, Amy returned an item meant for me, placed the money in her purse, and soon realized that Lily had pulled all the money out and had dropped it somewhere in the store. After an extensive search, she relented that someone must have picked it up already.

I had a hard time controlling my feelings through all of this. I thought of my own father being so calm and not overreacting when he was told about cars being wrecked, things being lost, or his tools being left out in the rain. While I could always tell he was dissappointed and he took time to provide a lecture on behavior, rarely did he raise his voice, and most often when it was an accident, he didn't blame anyone at all. Well, I tried to respond the same way throughout these two days, but when I found the two girls flooding our bathroom, I have to admit I was angry. This wasn't an accident, and we'd warned them about doing this before. I stuck them both in the corner for 10 minutes (longer than they had ever spent) and I gave them a loud lecture too. I had them clean up the house the rest of the evening, although any messes they cleaned were actually messes they had made. Maybe some of their behavior is related to the season. While it's a wonderful time of year, it is a lot of stimulation and sugar for energetic little children.

Well, today is a new day, and although I still have to finish fixing our dryer and do a hundred other things to prepare for my family coming this weekend, I'm hopeful things will go a little better. These times sure help me appreciate life when it doesn't include all these adventures.