It’s Always Sunny In Sunnyland . . .

Are all six-year olds like this?

Can we bottle this stuff?

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It was recently discovered that instead of putting their clean laundry in their dresser drawers, both of my children have been tossing everything into the back of their closet and, when told to clean up the bottom of the closet, have been tossing the aforementioned clean clothes back into the hamper.

This explains why we’re doing four loads of laundry a week for kids who literally can’t find anything to wear in the morning.

This is also not on.

I explained this in the car on the way back from church on Sunday and told them that I was very disappointed—Janie started to sniff and Sunny went quiet—and that the moment we arrived home, they would clean out the bottom of the closet, hang up the dresses and skirts, fold the rest, and put it all away in their drawers.  And then they would be responsible for washing, drying, and folding their own laundry.*

“Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mom,” Janie said, tearfully.

“Sunny?”

” . . . What?”

“Do you understand?”

” . . . What?”

“Do you understand that I want you to fold and put away the clothes in your closet the minute we get home?”

“What clothes?”

I went through it again, with, if I may say so, admirable patience.  “Do you understand what I want you to do?”

“Yes, Mommy.”

“Good.”

We drove in silence for a moment.

“Mommy?”

“Yes?”

“Does that mean we have to do what we understand?”

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A little later, I found out that there is NOTHING funnier than watching a three-and-a-half foot six-year old try to fold a double-sized comforter all by herself.

At one point, I walked past the bedroom and saw the thing moving on the floor, with a small foot sticking out.

For a second, I thought she was being digested.

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You know your family might be depending on Watson’s GPS a little too much when your  six-year old, impatient to get things on the road, puts her hands on her hips and says,  “Come on, Daddy!  We need to recalculate!”

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Moving Pictures

Guess which movie Sunny, Jane, Watson, and I went to see  this past Saturday?

Hint:  it wasn’t Pacific Rim.

My kids watch movies very differently.

Janie doesn’t do well in movie theaters, because there’s nowhere to hide when things get tense on the screen or even might get tense—she’s been known to freak during meet-cute scenes (“He could have said no!  It would have hurt her feelings!”)—and always assumes the worst. So she can’t sit still when we watch movies at home* and hides behind couches or goes in and out of the room, even during films like Curious George and Cinderella.  So I’ve learned to find the plot on moviespoiler.com and let her read the whole plot before deciding if she wants to come with us or wait for the DVD.

She thought she could handle Despicable Me 2, because she liked the first one, but changed her mind within ten minutes, insisting she couldn’t stay and had to leave and she didn’t like this movie, and could she go to the bathroom again and/or get another drink from the water fountain.  I finally told her to stick her fingers in her ears and close her eyes during the parts she couldn’t handle until I tapped her shoulder for the minion scenes, which were, I’m sure, the reason she’d agreed to go with us in  the first place.

Sunny, on the other hand, sat still through the whole thing, her attention glued to the screen.  She only crept into her aunt’s lap once or twice and seemed to forget completely about the movie snack I’d bought her.  Right before the part where Our Hero Faces Certain Destruction—which shouldn’t be a spoiler, if you’ve ever  seen a movie—Sunny came inching around Janie, who had wrapped herself up in a mute ball in her seat, eyes clamped shut with her fingers, and possibly her knees, stuffed in her ears. 

“Mommy?” she said, in a small voice, touching my knee.  “Mommy?”

I pulled her into a hug.  “I’m right here, sweetie.  Want to sit in my lap during this part?”

“Noooooo!” she said squirming away and staring at the screen.  “Let go—I just want my gummy bears.”

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*With supervision, because I’m not that far gone.

**Unless she plugs herself into my Netbook with headphones so she can pretend she’s playing a video game instead of paying any attention to, say, the first Harry Potter movie.  Which she totally was, because she kept mixing up Hedwig and Hagrid.

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