John Valby Would Have Been Proud

Just spent 45 minutes blitzing the kids’ room. I hadn’t realized they emptied both baskets of clean clothes onto the floor, along with their stuffy bin and 325 Pokémon cards. Ordinarily, I’d have left it until tomorrow but I also found ANTS. A few here, a few there, some under this, a couple on that. Why??

A cracker. Someone ate a cracker in their bedroom and left a scatter of crumbs on the floor under the desk, crumbs which have no doubt been there since before we went on vacation two weeks ago.

After the blast of red cleared my vision, I issued a loud volley of curse words and began throwing all the stuff from the floor onto the beds. “Not on my bed, Mama! I need a place to sleep,” cried my children, but a slit-eyed glare silenced them both. When the floor was cleared, I suggested – through gritted teeth – that if they wanted a place to sleep, they might consider putting a few things away and stormed off to get the vacuum and my favorite ant spray.

I returned a few minutes later to find my boys actually putting their clothes away. In drawers. They bickered a bit about what went in which drawer but they actually got their clothes put away on their own while I went to work on the ants and the crumbs. After their clothes were put away, they returned the stuffies to the bin and organized the Pokémon cards into a tin. My blood pressure had come down by then, so I reminded Ross pretty gently that it's Monday - the day on which he's meant to collect trash and take it to the bin in the yard. Ross started to complain about how late it was and how nobody had reminded him and ...but Lars stage-whispered, "Mama DID remind you! And Daddy said, too," which cut Ross off before the real whining kicked in and, shockingly, he went and did his chore.

When Ross had left the room, Lars observed aloud that I'd gone ballistic over Playroom a while back, too. He further observed aloud that since my fit, they've been pretty good about picking up in Playroom. Ross came back in. "Ross, we have to pick up our room now, just like Playroom. I don't like it when Mama yells," said Lars. As I tucked them in, I thought that perhaps it will be worth them knowing a few extra bad words if it means they'll keep their bedroom neat from now on.