When 4pm Friday rolled around I was exhausted from work. Tantrums, chasing, a seizure at lunch time, and not much sleep this week left me dreading going home to clean. put laundry away, and get the place ready for Matt's niece and nephew having a sleep over here. On the way home, all I could think about was making things as comfy and homelike as possible. I remembered how sleepovers were all fun and games until bedtime, when things just got crappy. I called Matt and asked him to remember blankets, pillows, luvies, nightlights, night music, extra snacks they like, toys, books...and he told me to forget about cleaning and to quit spazzing and pick up some milk and juice for the kids and put the laundry away and that would be it. He'd taken care of the rest.OMG what a guy!
I stopped and got personal kid cups for each kid (princess puppy for Abbey, Spiderman for Jack) wet wipes, little toys including glow sticks-BIG HIT!- and all their fav snacks. I'm still sipping the 1% chocolate milk.
We took them to Friendly's in West Boylston, since the Holden one had apparently spilled hot marinara sauce on Abbey once. The Friendly's around here always seem like a good idea until you walk in and remember that your server options are a 15 year-old with an attitude and vocab deficit or a 65 year-old from eastern Europe. It was so disorganized and took forever. Matt and I just kept talking to the kids and coloring with them until food came. Ohwell. At least they didn't have that creepy carnival painting like the other restaurants..eeeew.
Erik came over and played with the kids and I have to say he's fantastic with the kidlets. I hope he and Tracy want to have their own.
Matt had this great plan of letting the kids play until they got tired and fell asleep. I had this great plan of letting the kids stay up sorta late because it was a Friday night and an exciting sleepover for them. We put Abbey to bed at a decent hour..ok..I laid with her watching Monsters Inc. until she fell asleep. Jack played Wii pretty much the whole time. It was a fantastic reinforcer to use in order to have him do things like eat, drink, pee, etc. All we could do was switch up games so that other people were involved with him and he was moving around part of the time. I got tired before he did and ended up sleeping across the top of the bed with Abbey sleeping with her head at the foot. Jack came in after I dozed off and used me as a pillow most of the night. I moved him back several times but woke up every hour or so with a body on me or little sleeping legs nailing me in the gut. I love those kids, but next time Matt sleeps with them if one bed is all we have. At dawn, I managed to get out from under Jack without waking him (not my first attempt) and sleep on the mattress by myself. Erik made the kids French Toast sticks from scratch, not like my frozen ones on Thursday. Abbey loved it but, Jack, of course, tried it because that was the only way to get back to the Wii and promptly spit it out on his plate. He did that every single meal I'd seen for the past few days, for some reason or another. I made him try a few other things before he could play Wii in the morning. Later on he was snacking on what I put out for everybody and spit chewed cheez-it out of his mouth and back into the snack bowl! It grossed me out enough for me to quickly stop him from letting the whole mouth load go all over the snacks (funny, but gross and unacceptable..even though I'm giggling about it now) and calmly have him clean it up and pretty firmly tell him no more Wii if he didn't remember to use a napkin or walk to the trash the next time. I felt bad for being strict out of nowhere, but I always sound more wishy washy than I think, anyway. After that, we took them to their grandparents. 5 minutes before it was time to go, the kids freaked and didn't want to put jackets on and didn't want to stop playing. Kinda normal, so once again I used a toy I put out for them to get the kids to earn time with it at the Medine's. I felt bad when it wasn't earnen, but I explained there's always next time I was sure they'd earn it then and how happy I was they came to visit.
And I was. Very happy.
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3 comments:
Ah, nothing like "discipline" for other people's kids. Not your kids, not their turf = not easy. Don't worry, it's better to set up the rules at your house than have one of them get hurt because you didn't. (Or choke on Cheez-Its. Whatever.)
hee hee heee hee hee hee. Laughing, reading your blog. Loving you guys. You did AWESOME. I am suspecting Jack's boots were probably left at school (which he does 70% of the time, but kudos to you guys for finding that extra pair). And for doing a great job. The kids had a blast, sorry about Jack's pickiness with food, he's a pain in the butt, I used to blame myself until I had Abbey and she eats everything. Can we agree that he is a tad more of the difficult one, which should be the opposite since he is older . . . but he is a boy. I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY REMEMBERED ABOUT ABBEY GETTING SAUCE ON HER AT THE FRIENDLY's IN HOLDEN!!!! That must have been over 2 years ago. And we've gone there since then . . . a few times. . . and it has NEVER been mentioned, NEVER. So weird! Thank you again to both of you from my heart because I really did have a great and relaxing vacation and I couldn't of if I didn't know the kids were in such capable and loving hands. And we loved the signs you guys made. Such a nice touch . . . and you did laundry too and cleaned??? Wow. I was so happy when I got home to that.
:-)
I really had a good time. I usually feel bad having to give semi tough-love, but honestly, the kids were pretty awesome. Foodwise- Jack IS super picky, but this week I picked the whitest part of potato out of all of a kid's french fries so he would eat (wouldn't normally do that, but it's vital this kid starts eating more)So no big. Oh, and yes to the laundry and cleaning..if you can call it cleaning. I really appreciated how much work you do on a daily basis, tho. WOW. Matt was a lot of help and any time you need a weekend off, let us know. You have amazing kids. Cute too!
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