Egged, Toilet Papered, and Vandalized

Jonah and Lincoln are in an interesting time of life. They're in the time of the life where they are equal parts destructive, chaotic, and cute, often all at once. We'll start with the cute.

My friend let me borrow a scrunchie one day for a workout. You know, like the 1990s style scrunchie? The kind I haven't worn since I was 9 years old. I put it in my hair one afternoon when Jonah started staring at me confused. 

Finally he said, "Mom, What's that on you?"

I wasn't sure what he was talking about so I just looked at him looking confused at me.

Then he offered a guess, "...a sock?"

Over Christmas break Eli discovered the art of sleeping in. One morning he came downstairs:

Eli: "It's pretty easy to sleep in."

Me: "You're just now figuring that out?"

Eli: "No."

...

Eli: "I figured it out like two days ago."

Eli and Carson were playing Apples to Apples. The adjective laid down was "cute."

Eli bashfully said, "If I had 'girlfriend,' I would put that there."

This was the first time Eli has really shown any interest in girls and I thought it was...well...cute!

After waking up to see Lincoln had destroyed the house in his first lonely moments of being the first one awake. 

Me: "Lincoln, what happened this morning?"

Lincoln: "Well, I was good in the first place...but not in the second place."

Lincoln trying to sing the words to "Old Town Road." The words are "Can't nobody tell me nothing." and Lincoln, being confused by the double negatives, translated it to, "Somebody tell me something." 

While eating tomato soup and grilled cheese for dinner, I put some celery sticks stuffed with tuna on the table. Trying to catch the boys' interest, I said, "Who wants a celery boat?!?" I put them on the table and started eating my dinner. Before long I looked over at Lincoln who had put his celery stick in his tomato soup and with great disappointment announced that the boat didn't float.

Carson is so cute to help his little brothers get breakfast every morning. This is a lifesaver to help mom and dad get a few extra minutes of sleep!

Lincoln and Jonah had the naughtiest month of their lives in February. They were completely insane. I could not leave them out of my sight for one minute without full mayhem being brought upon the house. In fact, I had to instill a "babysitting" policy. They had to stay right next to me at all times because I had to "babysit" them because I didn't trust them being anywhere without me. Let me show you what they do when momentarily left unsupervised...

One afternoon Lincoln tried to tell me Jonah had found scissors upstairs. I was sure this wasn't true because all of our scissors are kept downstairs and I checked to make sure they were all securely out of reach. I was sure Jonah had found a toy or something unthreatening.

Moments later, I heard giggling and decided I should go see what all the laughter was about. The thing I have learned in the month of February is that I should live in fear of my own children's laughter. Lincoln was quick to let me know "Jonah" had cut the blinds and the curtains. Sure enough, I found two sets of blinds snipped and one curtain panel sliced. Wwwwwwhhhhhhhhhhyyyyyyyyyy?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!??!?!???!!!!!!!!!!!

Every day I try to start anew with hope that the boys are over their naughtiness. I had some extra valentines leftover from Valentine's Day and I thought it would be nice to let the younger boys play with the toys, you know, to keep them out of trouble for a minute so I could clean up lunch. Within one minute I turned around and found the boys shrieking with laughter as they smashed the dinosaurs onto our tile floor, shattering the failed entertainment attempt and my hopes for the day.

One day they were being eerily quiet, so I ran upstairs, bracing myself for what kind of disaster I might find. Turns out they were "playing bedtime" in their room and were quietly and perfectly reading books and then laying in bed. I guess they aren't all bad. :)

Or maybe they were just resting up for their high adventure afternoon plans -- toilet papering the whole upstairs! DO THEY NOT KNOW HOW VALUABLE TOILET PAPER IS RIGHT NOW?!?

When I'm sick of them ripping the house apart or vandalizing their own property, I coax them outside because what harm can be done outside?

Oh, you know, they might just find a ladder, bring it to the fence, pile rocks on the fence, and then wait patiently for cars to pass by for target practice. That's normal.

The blog was originally going to stop here. But I never got around to this post and lucky for you, the shenanigans have continued. I have no explanation to this other than I walked past the room and beheld the destruction with the same feelings of wonder and confusion you are now feeling. 

 Carson was eager to get in on the naughtiness.

 Jeff got home from work one day and said, "I had such a long day. I had to follow these two guys around town all day doing surveillance on them." I looked at him and assured him his surveillance duties were not done. We had two little criminals in the house that also required constant surveillance. I went on and on about how you can't leave them for two seconds because they strike so fast and do the craziest, most unexpected things at record speed.

And in the five minutes that conversation was happening, Jonah had managed to unroll an entire roll of toilet paper. It was brand new. I had put it fresh on the roll LITERALLY FIVE MINUTES BEFORE, and not only did he unroll it all, he shoved it all into the toilet as well. And not only did he unroll it all, shove it all in the toilet, he also began persistently flushing the toilet paper. When that didn't work, he seems to have recognized the toilet was clogged, so he did the logical thing and inserted the plunger into the toilet to begin plunging the glob of toilet paper. ALL OF THT HAPPENED IN FIVE MINUTES!

 And while the toilet paper fiasco was unrolling downstairs, another one was unrolling upstairs. Again, RESPECT THE TP, PEOPLE! QUARANTINE IS COMING!

Okay, like, the toilet papering is one thing. Fine. But he topped it off with drawing a smiley face on our bed. When asked why, "I wanted to decorate your room pretty." 

 After giving the boys their lunch, hard-boiled eggs and toast, I ran upstairs to put mascara on. When I returned, this was what greeted me.

They appeared to have used the yolks of their eggs as crayons and drew all over the floor with them. Because why would you eat food when you can destroy your house with it. BAAAAAHHHH!!!!

Here kids, color so I can clean up the egg smeared into our floors...

These boys are nonstop! We did a Zoom call with my family this week and apparently everyone was very entertained by the chaos that is our everyday life. Someone is always into something, something's always getting broken, and we are no respecters of toilet paper. Luckily we don't know any different!

Thirty-Seven in Rice Heaven

As is tradition, we went to St. George for President's Day/Jeff's Birthday weekend. 

We visited Snow Canyon because I have been dying to take all the boys back to the red sand dunes. 

They enjoyed it even more than I imagined they would.

We were happy to get to spend some time with David and Mary while we were there.

The boys took over David and Mary's bed for Sunday movie night.

On Monday morning we met up with Teresa and her kids who were also in St. George visiting family. Yay!

You can't go to Thunder Junction without a ride on the train!

Lincoln and Holland spent most of their time together like this.

We made it home to celebrate Jeff's birthday day with lots of Cheetos thanks to a killer deal at Smith's.

I've known for eleven years that Jeff's favorite meal is ham fried rice. Not just any ham fried rice, but specifically his dad's ham fried rice. He requests it every February 19th. For several years I was able to delegate this meal to the Master Chef himself, as we were often in Cedar City for Jeff's birthday, but after the first few years of Jeff's dad saving me from having to recreate his delightful dish, the duty soon fell on my shoulders.

So I made ham fried rice. Several times. And several times I saw the disappointment in Jeff's eyes when my ham fried rice fell short. He would smile and tell me it was just right, but the leftovers that sat in the fridge for weeks afterwards was all I needed to know I had not yet perfected the art of the meal.

This year I was determined to get it right. The entire duration of my February 19th was spent hovered over my phone, meticulously watching YouTube videos of incredibly talented Japanese (*Benihana) chefs prepare authentic, award-winning, can't-mess-it-up ham fried rice.

They made it look so easy, so effortless, so straightforward. They made me wonder how I messed it up so many times before. The only thing I noticed that I did differently from the experts is I had always cooked the rice and then just added soy sauce and all the other ingredients.

As it turns out, this was my fatal error. For fellow friends with husbands who are fried rice-ly frustrated, the trick is to dry out the rice before you fry it. I had seen Jeff's dad do this, but I had underestimated the necessity of the step. As it turns out, leftover rice that has been refrigerated is the most ideal for frying.

That simple step prevents the rice from turning into a mashed potato imitator and keeps the rice nice and separated as you add the soy sauce in. Look at that beaut!

Victory for the first time in my marriage! I have mastered the fried rice! (Though coming in at a slightly lower score than Jeff's dad, Jeff did eat the leftovers this year so that's all the feedback I need.)

Finished the night with angel food cake. Another food I have yet to master. Thank you, Smith's.

Happy Birthday to the big guy of the house!

Valentines Day

In simpler, less socially isolated times, the younger boys and I went to the Children's Museum.

Lincoln got a bike for his birthday. Jeff encouraged him to give it a spin, but he was a little nervous to be a two-wheeler.

Lincoln is happiest on four wheels. In costume.

Keeping in tradition with my Mom's efforts to turn every food into a heart-shape on Valentine's Day, I made a hearty breakfast for the family.

The little guys and I made and decorated sugar cookies. Because what else would you do with a free afternoon on Heart Day?!?

Lincoln lovingly made notes for each member of the family.

We love to walk to pick up the older boys from school. As soon as we get back to our neighborhood, I let Lincoln and Jonah out to run the last block of the walk. They have started lining up and assuming a starting position before "taking off on their super speedy motorcycles" to cruise home.

We only do video games on Fridays and Saturdays, so with Valentine's Day landing on a Friday, Eli fantasized all week about running home from school to play video games with his candy sprawled out around him. Well, he made that dream a quick reality within five minutes of walking in the door.

I kept up with the hearts through dinner. Because I'm fancy like that.

We have been having emotional lessons with the older boys about once a week after the little boys go to bed. I had noticed our whole family was struggling with effective anger management, so I bought a workbook to help us open up a dialogue about our feelings and to learn appropriate ways to cope with our feelings.

It has been an inspired idea and I'm grateful I followed through on the idea. I've really enjoyed spending intentional time with the older boys to talk about feelings and they have been surprisingly receptive to the lessons.

One evening we were talking about ways our body tells us we are feeling angry. Eli said he sometimes hits his head with his hand when he's mad. We said, "Yeah, sometimes people feel like they want to hurt themselves when they're mad. Do you think that's a good thing to do with your anger?"

Eli said no and we discussed what would be a better thing to do when we feel mad. He told us sometimes he likes to calm down by reading books in his clothes bin in his closet. We laughed because we've all seen Eli happily sitting in his clothes bin and I was proud of him for recognizing that is a positive activity that brings him comfort.

The next Saturday, Eli got upset when we told him we would have to do video games a little bit later than usual because of baseball practice. This is an incident that would typically set him off into an anger rage, but this time he *loudly* expressed he was upset, and then quickly regained his composure while plopping himself in his clothes bin with a book.

It's so hard to know what lessons will work and what is effective and it feels like everything we do sometimes is pointless. But these are the moments that keep me going and give me hope that some of our efforts to teach the boys to grow up into responsible adults might just maybe be working.