Last night I made chicken and dumplings for dinner. Only the pan I normally make chicken and dumplings in was in the dishwasher. Keaton had just done dishes right before I got home so the dishwasher still had 67 minutes to go. If I waited for it to finish we would have been eating dinner at eight o’clock at night. The only solution was to use another, smaller pan. [Or I guess I could have made something else, but I had my heart set on chicken and dumplings.]

Ten minutes in to cooking I realized why I never use this other, smaller pan. The liquid part started boiling out of the pan. All over the stove. In a huge puddle of chicken soup mess.

I told Keaton to come look. I said, “See what happens when nobody does the dishes.”

Well it turns out that Justis actually did dishes the night before and there were too many for it all to fit in one load. And since they do the kitchen chores [one does dishes, the other wipes the table and benches and sweeps the kitchen floor] right before reading and then they go to bed [at least that's what's supposed to happen], they didn’t have time to do a second load of dishes. However, they are also supposed to do dishes when they get home from school. Cause see, when you have seven people in your family and only an eight piece table setting [which is actually only seven plates made up of two Batman plates, three Scooby-Doo plates and then two other non-matching plates for us grown ups], dishes need to be done twice a day. Or else, I guess we could eat right off the table. That would make soup and sandwich Sunday a little more interesting.

So anyway, I told them after they were done with dinner they needed to clean off the stove as part of their kitchen chores for the night.

A few minutes later Lee walked in to the kitchen and turns in to a shrieking girl, “Oh crap. Look at the stove.” Ok, so maybe that’s not exactly how it went. But there was some panic in his voice. I didn’t even look up from my book as I said, “Yes, I know. The boys are cleaning the stove after dinner.”

Lee walked over to the living room [where the boys were at] and said, “You do know why this happened right? Because somebody didn’t do the dishes chore when they got home from school.”

That’s when the attitude went from a 2 [on a 10 point scale] to a 45. Justis went [with all the teenage boy rebellion attitude he could muster], “Well for your information I did do the dishes last night.”

Still not lifting my eyes from my book I said, “Justis, you need to start that conversation over with less attitude.”

Then Lee got all pissed and threw a hissy. Finally I looked up from my book. “What was that little huffy, throwing up your arms thing for?”

“Did you see the look he just gave you?”

“Ummm no,” obviously since I’m in the kitchen at the table and he is in the living room on the couch.

Apparently Justis had given me a dirty look with squinty eyes, half stuck out tongue and curled up nose. If you have teenagers you know what I’m talking about. I didn’t even have to see it to know what it was.

So I stood up and walked over to the entryway between the kitchen and the living room. In my best mommy-calm-with-a-slight-twinge-of-pissy voice, I said, “You will be respectful in this house. And you will knock the attitude out of your voice. Dad was not yelling at you. He was just speaking to you.”

“Well, I was just trying….”

“No you weren’t just. You were being disrespectful. If you want us to listen to you and treat you like a teenager instead of a child then you will speak with a lot less attitude and with a lot more respect. I want you to be able to give your side of the story but I will not tolerate a raised voice, dirty looks or mean statements. Now if you would like to start over I’m willing to hear your side.”

With a deep breath Justis went on to explain the story to Lee that he had just told me earlier.

I said, “See how well that went when you said it calmly. Thank you.”

I swear I am so not ready for these teenage years. I think I will be bald and frail from not eating and pulling out my hair. Who’s idea was it to have teenagers?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 11th, 2006 at 11:58 pm and is filed under Help Me! I have a teenager. Comments are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.