Evil Mom Genius =)

I gave up on loosing my schmidt approximately 4 days ago...yep one day after I resolved not to loose it...can't teach this mom new tricks. The kids were thrown for a loop on Sunday with the schmidt-less routine so they started figuring out more clever ways to get me to loose it...and they won.

I have spent the past 3 days on a relative strike, trying to find a way to regain my schmidt and, sadly, outwit the little stinkers. This means :
     I have not washed a single thing in the washing machine that has not physically touched an part of me (other than my hands)
     I have not swept the floor under the kitchen table
     I have not loaded the dishwasher
     nor have I emptied the dishwasher
     I have not nagged about chores

Instead I cultivated all the time I saved not cleaning up after anyone but myself and put it towards the perfect non violent punishment that I could come up with that would literally make them think twice about making me loose my schmidt on a daily basis...and it worked teehee.

Directly after Justin left for work this evening, Brenna and Gunnar got into a knock down drag out fight/spit war over computer time. I had had it with the bickering so I decided to take a test run on the 2 hard headed children that reside in my home (that currently has a dust cloud not unlike the one that kid in Charlie Brown had because of all the non cleaning).

Step 1 :
Hands on hips
Step 2 :
Right foot slightly askew.
Step 3 :
Stretch out neck
Step 4 :
Limber up the head wobble
Step 5 :
Clear throat (in an attention grabbing way)
Step 6 :
Call their respective names using my father's patented tried and true I mean business tone.
Step 7 :
Wait for their head to snap around as they freeze because they have inexplicably been caught.
Step 8 :
Point upstairs
Step 9 :
Demand they go upstairs and sit on 1 person's bed (this is key to several steps to follow)
Step 10 :
Reiterate that they may not go to separate beds but the one that I told them to go to
Step 11 :
Wait 2 minutes
Step 12 :
Head upstairs (this fills their minds with thoughts of being able to come downstairs because time out is over)
Step 13 :
Open the door that has been slammed shut so that they can have time to jump on the bed unseen as you come up the creaky stairs
Step 14 :
Look them in the eye and tell them that they need to face each other
Step 15 :
Smile as they lean in to hug each other thinking that this is a tactic that mom has used before, and if we are complacent she will let us come downstairs because we took the initiative to show her that we "love" each other.
Step 16 :
Explain matter of factly that they don't get off that easy
Step 17 :
Watch the pouty face spread across their dumbstruck faces as they realize that you can't be easily manipulated tonight (you will hear a silent sigh)
Step 18 :
Narrow your eyes
Step 19 :
Explain the rules of the punishment
     1 You will face each other
     2 You will not close the door
     3 You will smile at each other
     4 You will silently think of 3 things you like about each other
     5 You will not come downstairs until you are done...and I don't care if it takes all night
Step 20 :
Wait

Now as you go downstairs to engulf the silence you need to prepare yourself that one will think of 3 things before the other does and in order to make this fair...they will have to stay together until they both think of something they like about each other.
Step 21 :
Send the person that finished back upstairs until the other person thinks of 3 things as well.

Now you will hear teamwork...and for this particular experiment it was priceless. Brenna went back upstairs and listed off the things that she liked about herself and instructed her brother to pick 3 from her list of I am beautiful, I smell nice, I like pink, I am a girl, and I go to school. Gunnar promptly crushed her ego by telling her that those were stupid.

It took 90 minutes for them to settle their differences.

Brenna likes that her brother protects her, plays Mommy Daddy with her, and keeps her from being bored when she gets in trouble.

Gunnar settled on liking that his sister is pretty, doesn't have stinky feet, and that she sings like a girl.

I allowed them to sit down to eat dinner, when Jaxom and Brenna got into it...to which all I had to do was warn them that for every time they fight from now on...I am making them not only think of NEW things they like about each other but I am tacking on 2 more things so instead of 3 it will be 5, then 7, then 9, and so on.

Dinner was quiet. It was awesome.

As we cleared the table, Gunnar came over and he hugged me. I asked him what it was for, he said it was because he liked 3 things about me. And I dared to ask. He said that he like that I am Evil, his Mom, and a Genius.

That made me proud.