A Worthwhile Day

Being the mom of two boys with a 10 1/2 year age gap can bring new challenges every other second and some days even have me pulling out my hair, ready to just take a nap, by 10:30 AM! Today was not one of those days, though. Today was mostly made of the good things that make life as a stay at home mom worthwhile. One of my best qualities has always been that I can take apart the day and remove the bad things, letting only the good parts stay with me. My mother called it "dancing through life" once...I actually love looking at it that way. It's not always easy, and I don't get it right all the time, but today I did.

Monster Teen refused to get up today when I went in to let him know it was noon already. He is, unfortunately, his mother's son with that; he absolutely LOVES his sleep. I've been known to be able to sleep until 2 pm after going to bed at 11 when I was his age (one of the perks to having a single mom who worked during the day was sleeping to all hours of the day). I left him alone because it's really not that serious how late he sleeps and Toddler Troll and I were having a great day together.

Something that I have noticed about the age gap is that Monster Teen is getting to that age where he doesn't like to snuggle anymore. I still get hugs, but NOT in public. Toddler Troll is still in his snuggly love-bug phase of life, so I don't miss it quite as much. (A snuggle may be a snuggle, but one child never replaces another...so I still miss my snuggle time with Monster Teen) Toddler Troll and I snuggle-bugged, tickled, played games and finished cleaning his exceptionally messy room together. Then came his lunch and quiet time after that.

I was surprised that at the end of quiet time Toddler Troll helped pick up his room with no argument...he was actually laughing and happy until I asked him to pick up his "men" (little knights from his castle set that Grandragon gave him). I let him know that it was okay to keep them out if he was still playing with them and we had instant smiles again. Some time later all heck broke loose because Monster Teen decided to "grace" us with his presence.

After ignoring my request for the trash cans to be brought back to the house from the curb and the recycling to be taken to the outside bin, I gave him an hour to get it taken care of and then I turned off the router so he could no longer play Xbox Live. Yep, I'm that kind of mom. Action (or even inaction) has a consequence and one of the things that I think is a large problem in society is that too many children are not given this lesson. He was not at all happy and began to rain his wrath down upon his brother and me to prove just how angry he was. This rewarded him with a talk from me...there was a little more before this, but the tail end was the important part (to me).

"You do know that if you would do what I asked, when I asked, you would have unlimited amounts of free time after, right?"

"You know I'm angry, right?"

"I'm not too thrilled with you right now either, kid, but why don't we both stop the negativity and get some happy in here."

I then left his room, letting him soak in what I had told him. After about 5 minutes, he came out, looked at me and said, "You know you're weird, Mom, but somehow it works for you. I love you!" I was then gifted with the ultimate teenage reward, a hug and we continued our day with much better attitudes towards one another. Everything that I asked for was done and he played nicely with his brother for a while, too.

We had many little moments during the evening that I enjoyed...there were lots of moments of hilarity today, we all worked well together even when we had an upset to get over and now I'm listening to Duckie and Monster Teen watching one of their ghost shows together after Toddler Troll went straight to bed. Yes, I'm a lucky woman and I'm grateful for the reminders to enjoy the little things in life that I was given today.