We've entered a new Era folks!!!!

Guess who got to sleep in this morning???? ME, that's who!!!! Yes, it's true, I slept in until 11:00 AM with both children here. This is the most unbelievably fantastic thing that has happened to me in YEARS!

My mom gave me the advice years ago to put the cereal on a shelf where kids could reach it so that kids could get up by themselves and watch cartoons. That is one of the secrets to happy mommies. And happy mommies are better mommies. This is one of the better pieces of advice I have to say. The set up has been in place. The cereal is stored on a low shelf. I also recently started buying milk in half gallons because the gallons are too heavy for kids to pour. They know how to turn the tv on. They are old enough that they have a little bit of common sense and aren't going to be sticking forks into wall sockets and trust me, I would hear and come down if there were any loud noises. I have a very finely tuned mommy ear.

Skill - wise, we've been ready. The hold up has been my scaredy-cat children. At least, that's what they tell me. These little manipulators play the "I'm scared" card to keep me at their beck and call. They claim that if I am upstairs and they are downstairs, monsters could get them and vice versa. I haven't told them that if there REALLY were monsters, I wouldn't be able to do a damned thing to protect them and we'd all be dead, probably torn apart limb by limb. I'm not sure they're ready for that line of logic for why they shouldn't be afraid. What this means is that every morning when they wake up, they immediately come into my bed, climb on me, climb on each other and basically act as annoying as possible until I have to put one or the other in time out and am forced to get up and deal with the situation.

But this morning, I felt like crap! I've been sick the past two days and never had the chance to just sleep it off (like my bachelor friend who passed this disease to me), but for some reason I stayed up late last night. Oh, I know why. It was all the coffee I drank just to be barely functional yesterday. This morning, the idea of getting out of bed when the kids came in to start their usual routine of jumping on my bed with me in it seemed like the worst imaginable disomfort. I BEGGED them to go downstairs and let me sleep in, but no, they were too scared, they were hungry, blah, blah, blah. I was NOT getting out of bed, but they were equally determined to not leave me alone. Finally, I resorted to the time-honored parenting tradition of bribery. Betsy now understands money. "Betsy, if you will go downstairs and make yourself some cereal and watch cartoons so I can sleep, I will pay you $5". She was off the bed and down the stairs before I could finish my sentence. As soon as she was downstairs, Ian was quick behind. Aaaahhh!

I feel like that was some sucky parenting to bribe my kid to do something for totally selfish reasons. BUT, what she doesn't realize is that she now proved to me that her not doing it before has NOTHING to do with fear. If she was truly afraid, the money wouldn't have changed that. So in a way, I tricked her and next time I can ask her to do it and if she says she's afraid, I will be able to remind her that she's actually not. Future prices are always negotiable. Future prices could be along the lines of, being allowed to continue eating in this house. ha ha ha!