Like a Thief in the Night

Question: Are all children just natural-born thieves? Does everyone's house get burgled on a regular basis ... from the inside?

In this house, nothing is sacred.

No. Thing.

Not pencils. Not toys. Not food. ESPECIALLY not food.

I was not prepared for the amount of food young boys can eat. Teenagers, yes. I buy lunch meat, cereal, and milk by the truckload for the teenagers. But that's so typical, it goes without saying. No one was ever surprised by how much a teenage boy eats.

But it ain't the teens that are killing me.

It's the minions. 

They are 9 and 10, but they eat like 15 and 16. And it's not like I starve them.

They have hot breakfast at least 3-4 times a week.

They have a morning snack at school.

They have a good-sized lunch.

They have a snack in the afternoon. Frequently multiple snacks.

They have a good filling dinner every night.

But apparently that's not enough. Granola bars have a shelf life that can be calculated in hours. I buy about three bags of those Cutie oranges every week. We go through a dozen yogurts in the blink of an eye. And the bananas ....

Oh my — the bananas! Don't get me started on bananas.

But it's not the eating that bothers me. It's the sneakiness.

Every now and again, I'll go comb through their room, and what do I find?

Orange peel on the bookcases.

Granola bar wrappers in the pillowcase.

Candy and cheese stick wrappers under the bed.

An empty bag of marshmallows in the closet.

Squished juice boxes under the chair.

So we decided to get sneaky right back.

We recently purchased a new wireless security system for the rental house we're moving into and the house we are building. And we decided to give it a test. In the kitchen. [Insert devilish laugh here.]

We warned the kids ... we set up a camera on top of the kitchen cabinets that was pointed at the pantry door. They know it's there. And I have to admit, it seems to have cut down on the renegade snacking.

But then we took it up a notch. We put an alarm on the pantry door. 

The first night we armed it, we didn't tell the kids. At about 9:30 ... loooooooong after bedtime ... the alarm was tripped. Loud beeping came from the kitchen. My phone buzzed with the notification. Herb's phone buzzed too. We looked at each other and giggled.

BUSTED!

Enter a wide-eyed nine-year-old.

"What were you doing in the pantry?"

"I thought I heard you guys in there, so I came down to see what was up."

"No way, kid. Not buyin' it."

"No really! I thought I heard you!"

"Good try. Back to bed."

As he walked away, I heard him mutter, "An alarm ... on the pantry. No way."

Yes way.

But you know what? I bought a box of granola bars the other day. It's still there, on the shelf, where it's supposed to be. And there are still granola bars in it.

Maybe ... just maybe ... I'll stop going to the pantry and reaching into a box to find out it's empty. I'll stop going to make a recipe that chocolate chips and find the bag missing. And maybe one day ... a banana will turn brown.

A mom's gotta have hope, right?

Eat well,

DDD

Why I Hate Facebook

Yesterday a friend had posted on her page that her daughter had requested one of those necklaces with two parts. You keep one half and give the other half to your Best Friend! She gave the other half to her brother, who gladly put it on. She was proudly gushing about how close they are, how they really are best friends, and how one day the other will volunteer to be a live brain donor so they can not only be best friends, but also think the exact same thing at the exact same time.

[OK. That last part was false and just a little snarky.]

When I read posts like that, I'm jealous. I soooo want this for my boys. But at this point in their lives, I'm be lucky if they are speaking to each other at the end of each day. There is absolutely nothing wrong with her being happy that her kids love each other. There is nothing wrong with her saying so on Facebook.

I'm. Just. Freaking. Jealous.

So .... last night after I read the post, I commented:

Fast forward to this morning.

[Sunday confession: Herb is out of town with the minions. Sandy spent the night away because he was up half the night working on a school project. So I'm alone in the house on a Sunday morning. Even though I woke up early this morning, I read a novel and drank a cup of coffee instead of doing my quiet time. Then I got on Facebook ostensibly to check on good news from a girl in my boys' school who is fighting cancer, but instead I clicked on my news feed.]

Oh, goody! More people had comments on my friend's post about her kids who are Best Friends! I'm sure others are also bemoaning how their kids should be cage fighting instead of in elementary school. Let me postpone my quiet time again to read these comments, which are sure to assuage my fears that my children will end up on Jerry Springer or Dr. Phil.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Some comments:

"Good raising!"

"That's called good parenting and Christ in the center!"

Crap, crap, crap.

If kiddos who love each other and buy necklaces declaring that they're Best Friends! have Good raising! does that mean that my kids are the result of bad raising?

If sibling harmony is the result of Christ in the center! who's at our family's center? Satan?

*sigh*

Excuse me while I go eat banana pudding for breakfast ... in bed ... and finally do my quiet time. After which, if I still feel like a crappy parent, I may pop onto Amazon and see if anyone makes a necklace appropriate for my boys. Perhaps one that says...

"I barely tolerate your existence, and would probably choose to never be in your presence again if we were not genetically bound together and live in close proximity. Until such time as I am self-sufficient and of a majority age, I will continue to harrass you, beat you, call you names, make fun of you in front of your friends, blame you for things I have obviously done, and in general make your life a living hell."

I'm sure someone makes that, right?

DDD

Your Body Told Me

There are lots of things about parenting that aren't in the handbook. I mean, if there were a handbook. And even if there were, some things just wouldn't be in it.

I learned one of those things from my son's violin teacher. Miss Keiko has no children of her own, but has raised a lot of violin students. Some have been with her for more than a decade. When they go off to college, they still talk to her. She loves that.

Enter Joshua. He started taking lessons with her when he was four years old.

Joshua, age 4, at violin with Miss Keiko

When he was four, her biggest challenge with him was keeping him vertical. He would roll around on the floor, interrupt her constantly, and participate in this stream-of-consciousness conversation that he can really carry on entirely by himself. I don't know where he gets it...Oh, look! There's a birdie!