While trying to solve that crisis, my boys launched a full criminal investigation because my daughter had a sticker. Their evidence that she stole one of theirs? Absolutely none. Their confidence? Through the roof. Then breakfast happened. I made oatmeal. The same oatmeal they happily ate a couple days ago. Apparently sometime between then and now oatmeal became prison food. The complaints were immediate. Thankfully the bus arrived before I had to defend oatmeal in court.
The kids came home from school and within an hour it looked like a SWAT team had searched my living room. Backpacks, jackets, shoes, papers, random items I don’t even recognize—everywhere. So I kicked them outside to play while I cleaned up the disaster. About an hour later I went to collect my children and discovered I only had two out of the three I started with. Turns out my oldest and another neighborhood kid had wandered outside the agreed-upon boundaries because they found some interesting rocks. Not money. Not toys. Rocks. Thankfully another mom and I found them pretty quickly, which led to the classic parenting conversation of, “You know you’re not allowed to leave the neighborhood,” followed by a child attempting to explain why geology was a valid excuse.
Then came chores. My children informed me that they shouldn’t have to do chores because they did chores yesterday. As if chores are a one-time annual event like filing taxes. I explained that dishes also happened yesterday and somehow we still have dishes today. This argument was not well received. I offered animal crackers as a reward and suddenly everyone became highly motivated employees. One of the extra chores they volunteered for was rinsing dishes for the dishwasher. Great idea. Unfortunately, I left to clean the bathroom because somebody had managed to pee everywhere except inside the toilet. I’m not talking about a little miss. I’m talking about the kind of bathroom situation that makes you wonder if they were blindfolded and spinning in circles. While I was dealing with that, the children somehow flooded the kitchen. Then complained when I made them clean up the flood they created.
At this point I started making dinner. Complaints began before dinner even existed. One of my children somehow broke a wall hook completely in half. Not loosened it. Not unscrewed it. Snapped it down the middle. I still have no idea how. Tired and outnumbered, I informed everyone that we were having Taki Chicken. Now, this was not Taki Chicken. This was regular chicken with a little Cajun seasoning. In fact, it was basically the exact same chicken I’d made before. Suddenly I was a world-class chef. Everyone loved it. Everyone wanted seconds. Apparently the difference between disgusting and delicious is a better marketing campaign.
Then I made the mistake of going to the bathroom for five minutes. Five minutes. When I came back, the fridge light was gone. Not the bulb. The entire fridge light assembly. I didn’t even know how to remove the thing. My child apparently figured it out during the time it took me to use the bathroom. I told him to put it back and he looked me dead in the eyes and said, “I don’t know how.” Which was interesting because somebody clearly knew how five minutes earlier.
Finally, bedtime arrived. Forty-five minutes of negotiations later, everyone was in bed and I thought I had won. I was wrong. My youngest then decided he was hosting a concert. For the next thirty minutes he sang at full volume while periodically turning off his sister’s nightlight. Not because he hates the nightlight. Not because he was angry. Just because apparently he felt the performance needed lighting effects. So while one child complained about the nightlight, another was repeatedly turning it off between songs, and I spent the next half hour yelling, “Knock it off,” into the void.
So in the last 24 hours I’ve dealt with an emergency field trip, a swimsuit-top protest, sunscreen oppression, sticker theft accusations, oatmeal slander, a missing child, a rock expedition, chore negotiations, a flooded kitchen, a bathroom crime scene, a broken wall hook, fake Taki Chicken, a missing fridge light, and a bedtime concert tour. And people still wonder why parents are tired.
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