What the Boys Did

Saturday was insane with Wen's kid party and then a visit from some great friends for dinner... Sunday I was too exhuasted to even think of getting everyone ready and off to church so I delcared it a pj day and settled into chores around the house. The kids' rooms were messy to start with, but with the playing at the party and then the visit from three more kids, they were trashed by Saturday night - leave no inch of the floor uncovered! SO, I gave three warnings and shortly after breakfast sent them upstairs with the direction that their rooms were to be clean before they came out. That was about 930 or 10am. I helped the girls because they are three, but felt the boys were old enough to face this responsibility on their own. The girls and I finished in a half hour or 45 minutes and headed downstairs to colour, play then watch a movie... Paxten decided she needed a blanket to snuggle up to and headed back up to get hers out of her bed. It had been about an hour since we cleaned the room. When she reached the room I heard a shriek and her cry out "There's a mess in here and I didn't do it!" I had heard the boys going back and forth in the hall but I figured they were returning toys and/or animals the girls had left in their room. Heading upstairs I still figured that they had simply dumped extra things on the floor, but I was beyond shocked when I went into their room. The boys had TRASHED the girls' room. Not a toy, book, blanket, animal, was left in it's rightful place. The beds were stripped down to the fitted sheet, the bookcases were cleared, the cradle of dolls dumped, the shelves of animals emptied... Elliot didn't care much about covering up, he acknowledged he did it explaining that they wanted the girls to have to clean more. Jack denied any involvent and pathetically accused "Why can't you just TRUST me?" when I questioned his story... Elliot was sent to right the girls' room while Jack was left to clean thier room by himself (which had hardly been touched in the two hours since they started). By 330 both rooms were mostly cleaned up and Jack finally confessed to participating in the mess, but insisted Elliot lied too when he said "Jack did lots of things" as Jack maintained he only dumped a couple of things.

Sigh.

N