These kids are going to drive me to drink

Seriously. I'm having a drink right now. Nothing horrible has happened and no one has physically harmed another person. But they're driving me crazy! Let's start at the beginning.

Last night when I picked the 2 older kids up at daycare, the daycare lady told me that Catherine had gotten into a little bit of trouble. She and another kid took the family kitty and put her in the toy refrigerator, and would not let her out. Not nice. The cat was fine, but still, she knows better. So we get home, and it was just one of those nights that I was really crabby for no apparent reason. I gave everyone fair warning. "I'm just a little bit crabby tonight. None of you has done anything wrong, but you'll probably be better off to just leave me alone." And mostly, they did. There was some whining, a lot of screwing around, and questions of "why are you crabby?" Through gritted teeth, I replied, "I don't know. Go somewhere else." Things got better throughout the evening, until along came The Lie.

After her shower, I sent Catherine upstairs to brush her teeth. She was back downstairs within a minute and a half. I mentioned that she must have brushed pretty quickly, because it didn't take her very long. I asked her to show me her teeth. (I do this thing that only a mom would do--I scrape their teeth with my fingernail and then prove to them how pitiful of a job they did, by making them look at the crap that I scraped off.) So I looked at her teeth, and they didn't look too bad. But I knew something was up. I told her to breathe on me. Hmmm. "Why doesn't that smell minty fresh?" She tells me she doesn't know. So I asked her again, "Did you brush your teeth?" She told me she did, but that she didn't use any toothpaste. What??? "GET BACK UP THERE AND BRUSH YOUR TEETH--WITH TOOTHPASTE THIS TIME!!!" What is that all about? Gross.

We have a rule in our house that there are to be no video games played on school nights, so no video games in the morning before school should be a given. When I got up this morning, Catherine was already up, and had gone downstairs. So I went down there to tell her to start getting ready for school, and what do you think she was doing? No guesses? Let me help you. She was playing video games. (She has also been busted for playing her GameBoy DS under the covers at 10:30pm on a school night.) WHAT ARE YOU DOING??? "I don't know," she said, very meekly. I don't know either. She made up a story about thinking that it was Saturday morning, not Friday morning. Wrong. Then she admitted to the lie. Two big fat lies within 12 hours. What kind of kid are we raising? We had a long heart-to-heart just a few minutes ago, and I hope I got through to her.

So during this time of crabbiness last night, Alex was being himself, which is almost always a good thing. However, lately, Jason and I have taken to calling him "Jibber Jabber." He just rambles on and on about anything and everything, and it will drive you crazy if you're with him for any decent amount of time. It gets to the point where we just have to say, "Jibber Jabber! Quiet down, will ya?" It might sound rude for parents to talk to their kids this way, but seriously, sometimes it's all I can do to not pull my hair out when he's on a roll. So, while he wasn't doing anything wrong, he was still adding to the crabbiness.

Then there's Lauren. Cutest child to walk the face of the earth. Drives me crazy like no one else can, come bedtime. She always needs "something else." That "something else" might be a drink, a band-aid, another hug or kiss, or another stuffed animal from her toy box. If she's really desperate, she'll claim to have to go potty. That would be great news--if she actually did have to go. That's a tough one, and she knows it. We're trying desperately to get her potty trained, but she's just plain indifferent. I hate to tell her that she can't go potty, but I don't want to reward her stall tactics, either. We both win that one 50% of the time. When she finally gets into her crib, (a big-girl bed has been promised for when she stops peeing in her pull-up) she can barely fit, for all the stuffed animals and blankets she has in there. And she wants every single blanket on her. I counted tonight when I covered her up, and there were 12 blankets on her! Twelve! And within probably about 4 minutes of me walking out of the bedroom, she will be laying on top of them.

So anyway, I think I feel a little bit better now. Two out of 3 kids are in bed, with the 3rd one going soon. It's Friday night, which doesn't suck, and the weather was beautiful today and should continue to be warm over the weekend. Right now, 50 degrees is warm to us, and it felt great to have the doors open again! Perfect timing--I'm almost done with my drink.