Morning Angst

It's very weird that most of my struggles with the boys are all related to getting ready in the morning. Now, I'm the first to admit that among my working mommy friends, I have it pretty good. We have two FANTASTIC and AMAZING babysitters who alternate days and come to our house each morning to take care of the boys. We are incredibly blessed to have them in our lives and equally thankful that our children have not scared them off after four years.

Now that Jack and Nathan are in preschool three mornings a week, the girls get our boys off to school on those days as well. So I try to do my part to not just get myself ready but to help the boys on their way as well. That means I ask them to get dressed and make their beds on school days. Also, if they want to play video games on non-school days, they have to get dressed and make their beds then as well.

Okay, so we do pretty good most days. I should clarify that I help with the bed-making. It would be freaking amazing if they could do it on their own, but let's be realistic. So I help them out. Also, I put out a pile of clothes for each boy - socks, underwear, shirt, pants. I don't mess with a chore chart, because, let's face it - I'm lazy. I tried to do the chore chart thing but I kept forgetting to make a new one each week, and it's just too much for me. So never mind.

The whole point of this long, rambling tale is that our boys are so different in their personalities. With twins, you have to be careful not to stereotype. You can't say - oh, this one is my troublemaker and this one is my angel. That would be horrible. Seriously. Don't do that. Why? Not only is it mean to your kids, but it will come back to haunt you - and swiftly.

So right now, Jack likes to cooperate a little more "quickly" shall we say, than Nathan. Jack likes video games. It's his favorite thing in the entire world. Nathan likes more to watch Jack play video games, at least in the morning. So when we do the whole get-dressed-make-your-bed-before-you-can-play-video-games thing, Nathan could really care less.

This morning, case in point. He sat around completely naked for an hour and fifteen minutes, telling me NO MOMMY! YOU MAKE MY BED!! I WILL NOT MAKE MY BED! YOU GET ME DRESSED! I CANNOT GET DRESSED!

Then Miss J arrived and was able to convince him to get dressed in approximately one minute.

That's when we noticed that his pants were about three inches too short. Ugh. And of course, when we tell him to take off his pants to exchange them for ones that fit, what do you think happened? Of course he would not do that. He loved those pants and only those would do.

Whatever. I just went to work. I did tell Miss J to make sure the preschool teacher knows we tried to get him to wear different pants. Boys. Sigh.