Riding the Waves with Missy

Whew!

Last evening the neighbor children wanted to come over. I said it would be okay for half an hour and then the twins would need to get pj's on. I also required the twins stay on the front lawn since I was pruning bushes and trees and I wanted to observe the interaction. The twins agreed.

The kiddos from next door really wanted to be on the trampoline and other places other than the front lawn. James was just up front and let them know that he was staying where he was told. Missy on the other hand, tried to figure out ways to go play elsewhere. When it was time for pj's James went and got ready for bed. Missy argued, fussed, and flat out disobeyed. I tried making it final by firmly sending her to her room and shutting down her arguing. Ha, she just walked out of my sight. I was on the top of ladder trimming a tree next to the house speaking to her face to face through a second story window. She thought since I was kind of indisposed she could just get away from the window and do her own thing. Yeah. Think again. I had to drop the pruning shears and make my way to the ground. Things escalated to crazy at this point. Steve joined me in working with her.

This morning was market day. Bri and I were up and picking tomatoes at the crack of dawn. The other girls were out walking and then picking cucumbers. We came in the house to find both twins lazing in bed and it was nearly 8 AM. They had no intention of making any moves even after I warned them I needed to leave in 20 minutes. Amazing. Not a flicker of hurry happened.

I left.

Missy commenced screaming.

James wisely decided to get his rear in gear.

Bri and I set up our booth at farmer's market and every little while I would call home only to hear this out of control screaming coming through the line. I told Vanessa I was coming home and she could take my place. She said, "Mom, there's NO POINT. You can't do anything. No one can do anything. She's in her room until she decides to stop. "

It's true. I couldn't do anything more than Vanessa had already done.

Two hours later they all showed up at market. Missy was clean, dressed, and in her right mind. I took her with me to run errands while the girls sold tomatoes. She's choosing to try and get away with not obeying in little things.

I'm feeling a little hard on her.

Enough already! You will never get your way by disobedience and screaming!

The kid's world is small and getting smaller. I can't trust for a second right now.

I realize that because I wasn't in the house at 7 when it was time to get up they didn't because they had no motivation as there was no sound of breakfast being made, or people taking showers, etc... It was one thing to not get up then because they are kids and kids are generally lazy. I get that. BUT when I did come in and asked them to get going and they balked... that was not okay.   I understand that these kids do better with everything being the same day in and day out, but life is NOT on schedule. Some parents would go out of their way to make sure the morning routine is impeccably reliable, but is that really doing them a service? I can't really control our life that way right now. My husband went to work at 2:40 AM this morning. Yesterday he went at 5 and the morning before at 6. Tomorrow he'll get to sleep in till 7. That's life.Variety happens.

I paid James to do the sign job as he's starting to lose the thrill of waving the heavy thing.

I wondered if we could even make a dent in our pile of tomatoes.... We SOLD all but one box of large and one basket of small salad tomatoes, which Cindy gratefully took home. The restaurants are so thrilled with the quality of the tomatoes they want grape tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and cucumber with their next order on Tuesday.