1) I let the kids stay up way too late. Bonnie has the kids in bed around 730 when she's here. On a night that she works however, the scene around the house at 730 is quite different. Take tonight for example. At 730 I was perusing Netflix in search of a nature documentary I HAVEN'T seen yet, Grace was playing with her dolls in her room, and Tucker was abusing the strings on his out of tune guitar while belting out random lyrics like, "Oh what a special day! Special day! Special daaaaaaaaaaaaay! Because one plus one thousand plus one million is a special daaaaaaaaaaay!" Feel free to be as confused as I am.
2) I don't pay enough attention to what the kids are doing. I will probably be guilty of this for years to come. I feel like this habit developed way back in my teenage years when a few brave mom's in my home ward would ask me to babysit their kids. As long as it didn't sound like they were fighting I would give them the benefit of the doubt that they were NOT doing anything wrong. Probably every mom reading this right now is shaking their head saying, "No... NO Scott! When they're too quiet you KNOW they're doing something wrong!" This has turned out to be true in more than one babysitting experience. I remember one occasion, while babysitting 2 boys that I told them both to go play quietly upstairs. Eventually the older one fell asleep in his room on his own, but the younger one was happily playing with an unhealthy collection of Barbie Dolls on the stairs. To this day I'm trying to figure out why a home with two boys possessed ANY, much less, multiple Barbies?!?!
Ok, so maybe a boy playing with Barbie's didn't really illustrate my point, but I guess what I'm trying to say is when it's "too quiet" it MIGHT be a bad thing. However, it might NOT be a bad thing either.
For instance... tonight, while I piddled away with a couple different games on my phone the kids played quietly in their rooms. By quiet I mean you could've heard a mouse pee on cotton. I thought to myself a couple times, "I should probably go check on them," but brick breaker was getting intense. Eventually I wandered back towards their rooms just in time to see Grace putting Bonnie's camera back on her shelf. The following conversation ensued:
Me: Grace what were you doing with Mom's Camera?
Grace: Taking pictures
Me: Oh really, that sounds like fun
Tucker (Who appears out of nowhere laughing hysterically): It was lots of fun! We took some good ones!
Me: I'll bet you did, I think it's time for bed.
Well ladies and gentleman... I present to you 10 reasons why you should NOT investigate when it's "too quiet." Rather... just keep doing what you're doing and if your kids are anything like Grace and Tucker you might end up with some gems like these... Enjoy...
Just curious. What's the over/under Tucker was about to pee his pants when this pic was taken?
