Throwing Marshmallows

Sometimes I am amazed to hear the things that come out of my mouth as a mom. For example:

Jason, please stop eating Kyle’s legos…

What makes it even more wonderful is that this is the second night that I have said this…

In other news, I am still working on getting my old blog posts migrated over to the new Throwing Marshmallows. Hopefully it will be up and running soon! I will be sure to let you know…

Hmmm…it has been a year since I have had anything to post in this category. This does not mean that the boys have not argued in that long of a time. Just that they had not argued over anything so utterly ridiculous that I felt a need to post about it.

The qualifying argument occurred this afternoon while we were driving home from Jason’s pottery class. As is typical for spring in Northern Virginia, our weather has been bouncing up and down…wet and rainy and cool, 50s and 60s one day to hot and muggy 80s the next. Today was an 80s day and the car had been sitting for awhile, so we had turned on the air conditioning (have I mentioned that my boys are heat wimps?)

This was fine, until about halfway home (which, by the way takes all of 10 minutes), Jason decided to turn off the air conditioning in the back because he could not hear the audio book we were listening to (Sir Thursday, book 4 in the Keys to the Kingdom series by Garth Nix - highly, highly recommended!) This was not acceptable to Kyle who was hot (yes, whiney, cranky hot). Thus ensued the battle for the control over the air conditioner dial.

I was successful at holding the battle at bay for the remainder of the 5 minutes it took for us to get home by telling them that there was less than 5 minutes until we got home and to cool it. We got home, I got out and went inside. When I came back outside a few minutes later to let Ellie out, I realized that they were still in the car…arguing over whether the air conditioner of the car which was parked in our driveway, with the engine off, going absolutely nowhere should be left in the on or off position.

Realizing that the argument was getting physical with each boy pushing the other in an attempt to turn the dial to the desired position, I went in to negotiate, only to find that each kid was completely vested in their desired outcome (complete with justifications explanations why it was completely sane and reasonable for them to be fighting over this).

I threw up my hands in complete exasperation and said that this argument definitely qualified to be blogged about as a Really Stupid Thing The Elms Boys Argue About, which, believe it or not, broke the stalemate (well, that and my grand pronouncement that the dial would be placed in the half-on/half-off position, yes, please call me Solomon).

Ya gotta love ‘em…or at least that is what I have been told…

- Stephanie

When asked why he was sitting on the floor whining, Kyle responded:

It is only because Jason dropped the dog on me…

(and yes, he was talking about Ellie…)

In our ongoing series of RSTTEBAA (Really Stupid Things The Elms Boys Argue About - you can read the initial installment here) I give you this offering.

In preparation for a visit from my in-laws this weekend, I asked the boys to clean the upstairs bathrooms (theirs and our guest room) while I vacuumed the stairs. An argument ensued over who got to clean their bathroom because…get this…it was the dirtier bathroom. I kid you not.

We finally realized that the downstairs powder room was dirty enough to be an ok second choice. So Jason cleaned the toliet upstairs and the mirror and sink downstairs. Kyle got to clean the toliet downstairs and the mirror and sink upstairs.

I guess that this is what happens when you do not make kids clean bathrooms on a regular basis? We have a cleaning lady that cleans the downstairs (which includes the master bedroom and bath) so that leaves the boys rooms, guest room and the two bathrooms upstairs. The boys bathroom basically gets cleaned whenever I finally realize that it really needs it. Jeff recently got some kind of toliet wand that grips a cleaning pad that both boys think is really cool…go figure.

Now, please do not get the idea that my kids are neat-niks. Believe me, they are not. Just ask them to clean their room or pick up the family room and they groan with the best of them. But for some reason, for this period in their lives, they think that cleaning the bathroom is neat.

And I say that is fine with me…argue away!

~Stephanie

A couple of years back when the boys were arguing over something extremely stupid, I told them that I was going to start keeping a list of all the really stupid things that they had argued about (like who was going to go through a door first). They thought it was hilarious (and it distracted them from the arguing) so I threaten to add things to the list from time to time. Since I have since lost track of the original list, I thought that it might be a good thing to keep track of on my blog.

Today’s RSTTEBAA entry came when they were eating lollipops. They got down towards the end of the lollipop and started arguing about whose lollipop was “more finished”. Kyle insisted that his was the “most done” and Jason swore that his was so done that you would have to “cut the outside off to get it any cleaner”. The argument escalated from there…until I broke in and reminded them about the RSTTEBAA list…which still worked thank goodness!

Gotta love kids…at least that is what they tell me…
~Stephanie