January 1st, 2013--let's hope for a better year

For Dennis's birthday, I gave him a free fishing day to use whenever he wanted. The problem is that he waits so long to use his fishing day that I end up forgetting that I even gave this to him as a present. This year, he chose to use his fishing day on New Year's Eve. He and his Dad went up to Red Lake, so he has been gone for two days.

He has been gone on fishing trips for longer amounts of time, but for some reason, this time things were harder. I think it's because the kids are at the end of their Christmas break and they are bored of being at home (although they won't admit it.) There is also the Christmas letdown, when the exciting toys that they received are starting to lose the magic a bit. And so for the past two days, the kids have been restless and bored and cranky. Not to mention getting over the flu. Good job, Dennis. You're timing was impeccable this year. Unfortunately for me I got the short end of the stick this time.

And Henry, who has been sleeping through the night for the past few weeks, decided to suddenly start waking up again. The night before I was up with him a total of 3 hours. Not all at once, but pretty close. The first time he woke up it took him an hour to fall back to sleep, and the second time he woke up it was technically morning but still too early to be up, and he wanted to play. He was up for two hours before he finally went back to sleep. I got to sleep for about an hour when Luke woke me up at 6, asking if he could go downstairs to play.

We got through the day okay, and Henry and Anna took a short nap so I was able to lay down for a little bit. Later, we went to Mass for the Feast day. I wasn't looking forward to going with all 5 kids, especially when 3 of them don't go to Mass with us yet on a regular basis. But I was surprised--they did pretty good, except for Henry, who has developed a new screeching strategy. He gives 3 high pitched screeches any time he's bored or mad. Even in the crying room, he was the loudest baby and I think people were getting annoyed with his screeching.

When I put the kids to bed I prayed for a better night as I had one more to go on my own. But, of course, Henry woke up again twice. This time he didnt' stay up to play so it wasn't as bad, but I was still pretty tired in the morning. In fact, today has been harder than yesterday was. The kids are tired of playing outside and tired of toys and tired of each other. All morning I felt like I was putting out little fires with all their little spats. Finally, I had enough and started doing "the Dad thing", as I call it. Dad would start lecturing us and I think that he passed that onto me, because once I get started on my lecturing stand, you can't stop me! But, for some reason, the kids actually listen to the lecturing (as long as I don't get carried away with it). Since then, things have gotten a little bit better as the kids are making more of an effort to get along, but I still have the rest of the day to go.

One thing that we did was I picked up a game when we were at the store to buy bread. Normally I don't buy the kids toys randomly, especially when they just got a bunch of toys for Christmas 6 days ago. But I felt justified this time since it was a toy to share, a game to play with (which means no computer), and because we needed this little push to get us through the day. So I picked up the Scooby Doo game, which is basically like "Don't break the Ice!" game.

What a mistake!

You have to assemble all the little bricks to build the wall which ends up falling before you're even finished assembling it. Then, when you put Scooby and Shaggy on top of the wall, it falls down if you touch it even a little. It takes two people to assemble it, and it takes more time to put the wall up than it does to take it down. Pretty soon there were tears of frustration and I was beginning to think that all I did was add more frustration to an already frustrating day.

But then we pulled out Ants in the Pants, a gift from Aunt Esther, and I have to say, that game saved the day! There was no tricky assembling, it was easy and entertaining. I could actually leave the kids to play on their own, while I put Henry back to sleep for his nap (he woke up screaming after a 10 minute nap. Grrr.)

There always has to be a winner and a loser though, and my kids are pretty competitive. I was expecting big fights when I came back downstairs, but I was surprised to find that the kids were playing with another game that they got for Christmas; basically they are huge tinker toys from Discovery Kids:

This game would be a lot of fun if it wasn't so hard to assemble. As you can see, you have to really push the stick in the little holes really hard.

Here Max is asking, "Can you help me?" Every time the kids get a game, I usually end up helping them assemble it or playing it with them. 

Lucy is looking pretty calm here, but she knew I was taking her picture.

The other problem is that not all of the holes are drilled down to the exact size of the stick and so many of the holes don't fit.

Overall, it's a good game, but it definitely is one that needs adult supervision.

Oh well, they are off the computer and it's giving them something to do. Only five more hours until Dennis is home....