....Hello folks!! Ever wonder what to do with those UnWanted HouseGuests? You know the ones who stop by for a vist and Never Leave? Well... here's the solution. And I'm telling you folks It Really Works. Take your children. (It works best if you have at least two..) For the first 24-48 hours -- all the rules go out the window. They want to eat in their room? Let them! Drink pop whenever? Let them! Play games until 9-when-they-are-normally-in-bed-by-8? LET THEM!! You become their bff... not their parent. They love you! And They Will Behave. Why? Because they are getting. What. They. Want! And it's sooo much easier for you to deal with your Houseguests that way! By hour 49 the fun will Wear Off and their Attitudes will be back Full Force. And that point your over-easy-parenting goes Ka-Put. You Rein Them In. What? Games after 6pm? I don't think so! You want me to let you drink sugary beverages all day long? Not gonna happen! Eat food in your room so you can feed the hungry cockroaches? Think again!! They will be at each others, and your, throats faster than you can say JumpinJackFlash. And than the Houseguests will see the REAL Kids you raise. Gone will be the fabricated perfection that you all put on for them. Little Angels? Where? They will get to see the hyperactive mouthy little rugrats that you love sooo much. They will get to see the day-to-day yelling fits that happen to get them to Change Their Damn Underwear and PUT DEODARANT ON YOUR PITS NOT JUST ALL OVER YOUR CHEST.
It worked for us! They showed up last Saturday, with the hopes of staying two weeks. The first two point five days my kids weren't even here. The next four days we had three visits by Her child/wife/two-babys, which gave my kids even more chances of having No Rules. Let's just say by Thursday-ish we'd all Had Enough. My little precious babies and I were All Out Of Sorts. We THRIVE on schedules. We EXCEL on having Us Time. We'd had enough!!
And by five AM this morning they were voluntarily in their car headed back to Cali.
I do want to note that a small teensy tiny problem with it all was their secretive behavior. We don't sneak things in our house. The only two doors that get to even get closed is the a) bathroom door and b) our bedroom door. And "b" only happens AFTER the kids are asleep for "playing scrabble" and its open ten minutes later for the rest of the night. We don't keep secrets from each other. We don't lie. It's one of the reasons I don't socialize much or have a ton of friends and am very close to my parents. Because too many people are two-faced and secretive. I am so willing to believe the Front that people put on, that I often get burned by my own gullibility. So having two people that we don't really know locking themselves in their room constantly, she was trying to sneak chain-smoking on the porch (because you're INVISIBLE on our porch ... DUH)... just made it all the more awkard. Secretive actions make me cranky. Probably why having his son, bff, niece, and brother living with us didn't keep me happy for long. Secrets & Lies. Bring out the Bitch in me....
But just remember. You don't like your Houseguests? Sick your kids on them!! The older the kids are... the better the impact!!