Sugar and spice and everything nice vs. snips and snails and puppy dog tails

We are finally back to normal. Back to just five kids in the house. It seems so quiet now. Even when Spencer is revving up the new, very loud, Nerf gun he got for his birthday.

Last night was our very own scientific research on the differences between boys and girls. We could see the differences the second the kids walked through the door. The girls carried their sleeping bags and pillows to Skyler’s bedroom where they sat and giggled. The boys dropped their stuff right at the front door as they ran to the basement to begin tackling each other while talking in voices loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear. There are no secrets with boys.

Then the boy remembered there were girls in the house. And began the game of chase. The boys chased the girls through the house, our the front door and around the neighborhood. The girls were screeching. The boys were roaring. And I was stumbling around the house muttering “where’s the ibuprofen?”

We decided to take turns with dinner because, although our kitchen is a nice sized eat-in, it’s not really equipped to house fourteen people all at the same meal. We laid out pizza toppings and let the kids make their own individual pizzas on English muffins. Then we washed that down with cupcakes and ice cream. Followed by present opening. First the girls then the boys.

After supper it was time to play. The girls nestled in to chairs in the garage to watch a Ella Enchanted on the big screen. One of the boys decided to watch with them. The boy who was the instigator in chasing the girls. The boy who I think has a tiny crush on Skyler because he barely left her side all night.

While the girls were enjoying a movie the boys were playing video games. Lee put two TVs in Spencer’s room and hooked the PS2 to one and the Xbox to the other. I didn’t really need to plan any activities for the boys because they would have been happy playing video games and computer games all night long. Boys are so easily entertained.

Halfway through the movie the girls got bored. They wanted to be up running around. Not sitting in the dark watching a movie. So we decided to have a little gender rivalry. The boys vs. girls in a game of Nick Jr. Scene It. The girls were blowing the boys away for much of the game. But at the end the boys caught up and won it. The girls were not at all pleased by that. And while the boys wanted to play another game so they could “kick their butts again” the girls declined.

So while the boys got competitive in a manly game of Sorry, the girls and I went up the kitchen to make jewelry. We got out the beads and the fishing wire and made necklaces and bracelets while the girls gossiped about school and things the did when they “were little.” [They're seven and eight. They're still little. But they sure don't think so.]

As we were finishing up one of the boys came upstairs with Skyler’s guitar and serenaded us with a very nice rendition of Baby Got Back and a couple of KISS songs. Only his version of Baby Got Back went like “…with a black thing on your face” instead of “…with a round thing in your face.” I don’t even want to know what this black thing is on our face.

By this point it was getting pretty late. We sent the girls to Skyler’s bedroom upstairs and the boys to Spencer’s bedroom downstairs. The kids got in their PJs, spread out their sleeping bags and laid down to wind down with a nice, quiet movie.

Yeah, right.

Instead of movie watching there was wrestling in the boys room and a pillow fight in the girls room.

Finally we got them all quieted down and I went to bed. I can’t hang like I used to. I crawled in to bed around 1am. Lee stayed up to make sure all the kids stayed in their respective bedrooms.

I had Caleb in bed wit me since he normally shares a room with Skyler. I vaguely remember Lee coming to bed and asking me what he should do with Caleb. I growled, “Put him on the floor” in my best how dare you wake me voice. He ended up not moving him and instead went to sleep on the couch.

At 7:30 this morning I could hear the pitter patter of little eight year old feet in the hallway. Only it wasn’t so much pitter pater as it was rumbling. Lee got out the donuts, cereal, milk and OJ for breakfast while the kids woofed down their food. Then Lee came to bed and I got up. Not that I was happy about it. I’m a girl who needs a good 8 (or 12) hours of sleep. Six hours wasn’t cutting it.

The boys spent the rest of the morning playing, you guessed it, video games while the girls played Skyler’s new Hannah Montana board game.

After the kids went home I had to drive to school to meet my team and write our offer for my Direct Marketing class. It’s a 30 minute drive and I fought my eyelids the whole way. I turned the radio up really loud to try to keep myself awake. I even opened the window a couple times to let the raindrops smack me in the face.

When I got home Lee was preparing the garage for the big Dallas Cowboys game. As luck would have it, the kids were interested in the game too and they all headed out to watch. That left me with a quiet house and a comfy couch. Which is where I spent three hours mentally studying for my midterms…with my eyes closed.

It’s a good thing birthdays only come once a year. That gives us enough time to forget how exhausting they are.

Share and Enjoy: