posted by Stacey on chaos, children, large family, toddlers

6 comments

I love my children, I really do. But there are things they do that make me crazy. I’m talking tear my hair out, run screaming from the house crazy. Some of them are probably completely illogical, but that’s beside the point. The last few days, their quirks have been especially annoying. I blame it on the inversion, or being off-track. Or maybe both. I. Need. Sunshine.

1. Standing up or wandering around to eat. Without fail, every morning I come downstairs to find my eldest standing up at the counter to eat breakfast. And every morning, without fail, I tell him to sit his behind in a chair. The kids can barely transfer food to their mouths while sitting, I can’t imagine it will be better if they stand up or walk around.

2. Leaving backpacks, shoes, coats and whatever else littered through the house. If you count my preschooler, I have six kids in school. That’s a lot of dang backpacks. I have started collecting them and putting them all in “jail” and making the kids do chores to earn their stuff back. I keep thinking this will solve the problem, but apparently I have some slow learners.

3. Refusing to flush the toilet. What is that? Why in the world would you not flush? And yet, every night when I tuck them into bed, I have to flush the toilet in their bathroom. And often I have to plunge it too. EWWWWW!

4. Asking me where they left stuff. If they put their stuff away they won’t lose it. I think I repeat that particular mantra at least 4 times a day.

5. My toddler. Right now, he is just one giant pet peeve. Everything from screaming to grunting and not being able to communicate effectively is making us both crazy. It’ a darn good thing he’s so cute.

6. My son’s cat. Yes, I remember caving and bringing the dang thing home. But I should have known better when we learned his name was Rebel. He lives up to his name. He gets on my counters, scratches at my carpet and poops in the tortoise cage.

7. Telling me there is nothing to do. Wanna bet? I’m almost positive I can find you something to do… We made it exactly 4 hours into our first day off-track before I started to hear the “I’m bored” mantra escaping many a face, at which point I gave them a list of things they could do and they quit complaining.

8. Fighting. All the fighting over which spot is whose and who was sitting there first and who called shot-gun just makes me crazy.

9. Spilling their breakfast cereal. I know they don’t mean to and I’m really pretty patient about it. But deep down inside I cringe because it almost always happens the day after I mop the floor.

10. My older kids scaring my younger kids…or their cousins. I think it must be a birthright that is handed down, but each of my older children have taken turns scaring the crap out of a younger sibling. Or more recently, their younger cousins. I came home yesterday after letting my older children babysit their cousins and siblings for 15 minutes only to learn that they were playing Bloody Mary and all of the little kids were in tears. Awesome.

There you have it. Ten reasons that you just might see me running through the streets screaming. Dang kids.

What do your kids do that makes you crazy?

Tags: chaos, children, motherhood