Cleaning time

Yesterday I asked the kids to clean their rooms. Matt immediately began crying and telling me that cleaning his room makes him old and if he gets old then he'll die, so he doesn't want to clean his room because he doesn't want to die. WHAT?!?

Abby was cleaning her room today (because it wasn't finished yesterday) and blared her music on her CD player. Just because she wanted to hear her music. It reminded me of the other day when she was blaring her music (Heaven help us, it was Hannah Montana) and Josh and I were sitting in our room with Millie. Josh yelled out for Abby to turn her music down. I just started laughing. Shouldn't we have another six years, at least, before we yell at our children to turn down their bubble-gum music?

And not to leave Emma out of the mix, she brought home a gingerbread house she made at school at the beginning of the Christmas break. Unfortunately, she was pretty sick that first weekend before Millie was born, and wasn't well enough to begin picking at her gingerbread house herself. But everyone else was healthy enough. A few days later, when the house was nearly bald, she came pouting to me saying that everyone's been eating her gingerbread house. I told her that I knew that. She paused, looked at me, and asked, "Have you been eating the candy on my gingerbread house?" I looked at her with a very matter-of-fact look and said, "Yes, I have." I thought for a second that she was going to go berserk, but instead she shocked me and her face brightened and she gave me a huge hug. I think she appreciated my honesty, but mostly she reminded me that we don't always have to get mad at each other. She made me rethink everything that day.