Pushing the Boundaries

I'm not sure what is happening. I was at 34 followers for months and months and suddenly in less than a week I have 41.  Welcome to our world of delicately balancing  Tough Love, and Grace and Mercy while leaning on the Lord for Wisdom.

Today was something else.

It was a late night due to a wonderful New Years party.

Uhh, ... make that a WORK party at the church after the Sabbath hours.... the remodel job is requiring all hands on deck. I wouldn't actually know if it was fun since I was still sick in bed with the flue, but according to the twins it was exceedingly worth their every effort to be on their best behavior yesterday. I can't imagine they did much to contribute to the effort.

However, they didn't get to bed until 9:30.

They seemed fine in the morning. I had to leave them with Christina for a little under 2 hours while I filled in for Vanessa at her Sunday church job on the piano. I left them with little lists of easy chores to keep them busy, and hopefully, happy.

Alas! It was not to be so.

I no sooner left then Buster pulled out all the stops. NO WAY was he going to follow the directions of Christina when no one was around to back her up.

He reverted to OLD behaviors not seen in awhile.

refusing to follow directions
screaming
throwing shoes and toothbrushes
kicking the door
spitting
snotting (there is such a thing!! It's where the snot goes flying everywhere - as apposed to snogging in which the snot is snorted in making a noise that DRIVES THIS MAMA INSANE!!!! but is still preferable to snotting!)
sticking out his tongue
dumping the compost in the middle of the road and hurling the bucket away
wetting his pants
swearing (only he's forgotten the words, so the best he could come up with was "stupid man!!" The intent was clearly to use foul and hurtful words).
 
The response to the sos call was, "dress him warm and send him outside and don't let him in the house."

It worked.

When I returned we dealt with everything and he's quite certain at this point that he will NOT be repeating that again any time soon. I can't say he enjoyed picking up every tiny bit of compost off the road while his fingers got cold because it didn't work to use mittens.  He's quite tired of the hall bench. He'd like his pants back, but they are still wet from him washing them out by hand and forgetting them in the bathtub. I still have to maintain the one-pair-of-pants-a-day rule.

On his own Buster recited "Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right."

With a little prompting he remembered "Good understanding gains favor, but the way of the sinner is hard."

At lunch he asked for dessert. I was a little surprised. No one had mentioned dessert. I almost think he was testing me to see if he was off the hook yet for the morning atrocities.

"Sorry, Bud, you didn't show good understanding this morning. There are no favors gained with sinful behavior. I think you were a little bold to ask after everything that occurred this morning."

Before bedtime Buster came to me and sincerely apologized for his wrong doing. He doesn't want to be like that, really.  He is indeed sorry.

For exercise purposes, I introduced the twins to The Nutcracker Suite and hippity-hopping around the house to the lively music today.
When Christina was 6 she used to play  this cd while she rode her stick horse. We had a real horse, by the name of Goody Two Shoes, at the time, but she wasn't much into riding her. The stick horse felt safer, but she wouldn't play with it without her riding helmet.  One day I was astonished to find her neck and shoulders were completely black and blue from the helmet hitting her shoulders as she galloped over jumps and various articles of furniture. It took some convincing on my part to get her to stop wearing the helmet when she played horse. Tonight we found out the CD is almost completely worn out and will only play 3 of the pieces so I ordered a used one off of Amazon.

Anyway, I think I wore the twins out on the hippity-hop balls. Buster was quite taken with the music. I'm digging up some William Tell Overture for him. I think he'd be pretty excited with William Tell's "Lone Ranger" music and even the 1812 Overture.

Christina was invited to go downhill skiing with friends. She had a wonderful time and I was very glad she could go. The tow rope fee was all of $10 and the skis and boots were free for the borrowing. Apparently, she hasn't done this enough. She took out a fence in an effort to avoid hitting other skiers.

Not to worry,

it was one of those plastic fences and all she's got to show for it is the story.

The girls are flying home tonight.