My sister came to stay last night for a few days. She’s a retired elementary school teacher who is magical with kids so of course our three boys fall in love with her every time they see her. She made plans to take them shopping today and the advent calendar was going to surprise them with a tree trimming party complete with take out Chinese supper.
At 9 am I was woken abruptly by Kit screaming bloody murder at his dad. “NO. YOU CAN’T. DOOOOONNN’TT...” etc. while Buddy yelled back about staying downstairs and not waking Grampy or Grammo would make trouble. No such luck there. I didn’t want them to wake Katrina so I had to get up or it wouldn’t stop. Kit looked up red faced from the bottom of the stairs and denied it all while Buddy told me that Tio had been swearing at him. This was typical Saturday behavior - for a couple of months ago. We’d been doing so much better. I’d felt their respect for Buddy was getting better.
But it wasn’t really that. It was the injection of someone new into their world which created confusion. They were feeling their oats with Katrina here and fell back into old behavior patterns of trying to boss their dad around to reconfigure the pecking order. I canceled the day’s outings and said I’d be spending the day with my sis and we’d all regroup for tree decorations and supper.
It really is amazing how a change in environment can throw everyone. The boys were taken aback at losing a shopping day with her but realized they’d screwed up and things snapped back to normal very fast. Sugar and Danny came over and we had a great family supper, trimmed the tree, and celebrated some great news we got on Friday.
I expect things will go back to normal tomorrow and they can all go on a spree with Katrina and have another great advent calendar excursion.
