The Hammer

First, let me clarify any confusion that my crazy countdown created.  (Alliteration! English nerd!).  We are expecting Sean home on the 17th.  So 10 days to go if I go to bed right now.   Anyway, with his impending arrival I realized that I need to bring the hammer down now so the kids don't associate getting back to real life with Sean coming home, i.e. blame him for having rules and punishments again.  I started last week with assigning chores and making them actually do them.  Part of this is stemming from the realization that someday they will need to live on their own and make their own sandwiches.  So every morning now they try their best to con me into making their sandwiches to take for school lunch.  And when that doesn't work, they go all passive aggressive on me and I spend the rest of the day finding peanut butter smeared in various places around the kitchen.  I will not cave in!  I am taking a clue from mothers who have gone before me and I hide during part of the morning so they can't guilt me into doing everything.

Anyway, I have faced some resistance to the hammer and tonight was full of meltdowns.  After making a perfectly good and healthy dinner (which is rare lately) and then throwing most of it away I was pretty peeved and therefore denied them any additional food.  Patrick has decided that he can choke down a cookie with nuts in it now so he keeps requesting them from my personal stash in the freezer.  I'm sorry, but anyone who is delighted with a Poptart is not getting my Barefoot Contessa cookies.  And anyone who rejected dinner is not getting anything at all.  He finally gave up on that battle and then lashed out at me when I put the toothpaste on his toothbrush wrong.  I told him I wasn't redoing it and if he didn't want to brush his teeth that is between him and the dentist, he can explain what happened.  (This argument is losing it's effect because despite their best efforts to avoid denial hygiene, the kids have yet to get a cavity, baffling.)

After that battle and after I successfully cut down the bedtime stories by half,  and I thought I had him in bed for the night.  And then the wailing started.  Oh, it was exaggerated and ridiculous.  He finally noticed that I took his junky basketball hoop thing out of his bedroom and he wanted it back.  This went on for quite some time and I know, because I took my cider into my bedroom and locked the door and did quite a bit of email, and yet it kept going.  I thought he finally collapsed and gave up but I think he was searching the house instead because it started again.  I did finally go get it because the girls were trying to go to sleep.  All the girls had their drama today too, just a long day.  I think we are all just done with this deployment, no patience left.  Time to get in bed and end this day.