Are these my kids?

So far, the afternoons and evenings with less TV are exhausting. Plus, it has been raining, so shoving the kids into the backyard to sweat it out is not always an option. I guess I could do it…throw them some soap and say, “take your bath while you’re out there! Mommy’s fixing coffee.” The exhaustion has been a good one, though. I’m exhausted because I am actually consistently engaging with my family in a way that I haven’t really ever done before. I am becoming a parent of kids instead of babies. It’s a huge difference.


I pick the kids up from school around 3 pm. Bubba is generally worn out. He sort of slumps down in his booster seat and answers my incessant questions with a grunt. Sometimes, he will just say, “Stop talking to me. I’m not gonna listen to you.” Then he shoves his “Lovey” in his face and pops his thumb in his mouth. His eyes glaze over and the sucking magic works its power. I asked him one time what he was doing with Lovey while he sucked his thumb. He condescendingly informed me that he was “smelling” it. Bubba is a die hard thumb sucker. The kid has Linus beat! When the dentist told him the other day that he was going to have to cut back on the thumb, he nearly had to be committed. He doesn’t want bad teeth, but he really doesn’t want to live without the thumb. I feel for him. I was a two pack a day smoker for about 7 years and quitting sucked. But, one of the things that helped me to quit was to get out the environment that made me want to smoke. For Bubba, TV watching goes hand in hand with Lovey and thumb sucking. So, in theory, cutting back TV watching could also help Bubba quit the thumb. Another reason to keep this plan going! Anyway, after we go by and pick up Sassy (who will now attempt to glue herself to either my husband or me for the rest of the night) we head home. I give them bottles of water and a snack in the car, so that they don’t cannibalize me as soon as we get in the door and hopefully to brighten their moods. Yep, bribery again! But, I need them to be in a good mood! I can’t depend on the TV anymore.

In the not so distant past, we would come home, the TV would come on in the kitchen for one kid and on in the play room for the other. They would whine for more and more snacks and drinks and we would all scream at each other until dinner time. Either my husband or I would try to make dinner while the TV blared and the kids climbed in and out of the cabinets. Usually, the other adult would be either on the computer, cell phone, or ipod. Or we wouldn’t want to deal with it and Hubby would go out for fast food. During dinner time, at least one of the kids would refuse to eat anything. We would try to keep the TV off at least while we ate, but it never lasted. Also, the one downstairs was always on, so our son would sometimes refuse to even come up to eat or he would go back and forth. It was insane.

Now we come home, and we have to decide what we are going to do…together…as a family. So far this week we have listened to music, sung songs, talked about school, played picnic, played school, colored, practiced letters and went to the playground (it wasn’t raining the whole time.) Bubba has earned a TV dollar every day so far for having a good day at school, so one option is to watch 30 minutes of TV before dinner time. He chose that on Monday afternoon. He and Sassy fought over what it would be, but something was finally picked, and I made dinner. I was genuinely surprised that when the 30 minutes expired they didn’t execute me. Instead, they came upstairs and played together before dinner was ready. I really didn’t think it could be that easy to say “OK, times up. Turn off the TV” and they would actually not throw a tantrum. Maybe they are just biding their time for a sneak attack. If there is no TV dollar to spend after dinner and bath time, it gets hard. We are all tired and the kitchen still needs to be cleaned up. I find that I try to influence Bubba to use his TV dollar in the evening instead of after school. It works really well to go from TV time to get ready for bed time to bed time. Bed time routines have been much easier now that the strict TV limit is in place. My son knows he will not get more time no matter what he does. When the time is up, and the TV goes off, he does not argue. This week both kids have been asleep by 8 pm. Holy EXPLETIVE.