The other day I was practicing some drills in Mom Surveillance.  This means puttering about in the room next to my sons as I eavesdrop on their conversations.  I do this to monitor if they are normal, not weird, children.  I have a chart:

 

 

I also have night vision goggles and I know how to use them.

 

As I pretended to clean the cat box, I overheard this:

Red:  Dis is MY train, stop takin’ it!

Blonde: Red, dats MY train, it was a birthday present and it is VERY SPECIAL TO ME.  (Blonde often claims about 90% of the toys in this house, broken or not, are birthday presents and thus, VERY SPECIAL.  This is a fat load of horse poop, because he barely gets anything for his birthday.)*

Red: (unfazed) Thata is not da truth.  This twain is MINE.  Grandpa gave it to me.

This riveting back and forth session sucked about four minutes out of my life, and since I aim for brevity let’s pick up here:

WHACK!

(Dramatic pause…)

WaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAA!!! MOOOOOOOOOOMMMM!

Yep. Somebody got whacked.  Not in the Italian mobster fashion, thank goodness, but in the toddler smiting fashion.

So…  you know the drill…  we all go to the timeout area, we talk about why.. blah blah blah, somebody says sorry… blah blah… the enthusiasm for the whole thing about equals when I pretend to clean the cat box.

The boys are left to timeout to “think about what they’ve done” (which means = I am going to walk away before I lose it, and they’re stuck there, so blessed containment).

After a bit, I hear it:

Blonde:  RED, OBEY your parents because it PWEASES DA LORD.**

I froze in my tracks.  A tough thing to do because I was actually trying to hustle the litter box refuse out the door (no more pretending).

My son, my sweet, darling, adorable son had just quoted scripture to his brother.

Warm fuzzies, ya’ll. Somewhere a bell rang, an angel got his wings, St. Peter high-fived Paul, and Jesus said, “Ch-CHING! Momsie!  Your children are so spiritual!  And I should know!!!!“

 

The end!

 

What. WHAT?  (The Lawyer, aka, Mr. Pain in the Tuckus, is here.)

Well, I KNOW it’s not really the end of the story but I don’t want to bore them-

But-

Well-

Why?

Can’t I just?

Really?

Don’t pull that whole “journalistic integrity” thing on ME.  That’s only for people covering the war, or something.

FINE.

 

Ok. Sigh.  Here’s the rest of the story:

 

There is the possibility that while in timeout, the Party of the First Party kept leaning slightly towards the Second Smaller Part of the Party (or something like that; I’m not so good at this legal speak stuff).  This “leaning,” I guess, qualified as a crime against humanity and resulted, thusly, in what I term Extreme Whining, which made the Third Party lose her cool and bellow at the top of her lungs at Both Parties:

“GOD GIVES JOY TO THOSE WHO GIVE PEACE!*** SO GIVE PEACE! RIGHT NOW, OR YOU’LL BE SORRY!!!!”

Yep.  Nothing like shooting scripture AT your children, lobbing it like a big, fat, cannon ball of God’s Biblical Truth. BLAMMO.

 

So later that day:

Red and Blonde are in the play room.  Momsie is skulking about as well. As always.  This time, she’s pretending to clean the bathtub.

Red:  Here’s da bible!  Dis is our bible, wite?

Blonde: Yep.

Momsie starts to glow with pride.  They’re gonna talk about the bible!  Jesus moment!!!  I feel like a bird watcher who just spotted a SapBellied SapClucker or something.

And then:

Blonde: Wait…  no… that’s MY bible.  It was a birthday present and IT’S REALLY SPECIAL TO ME!

Red:  No!!  It’s MINE!

(Dramatic pause…)

 

Yes, you know the rest.

One of my kids hit the other one.  With the bible.

And lo, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth as the result.  From the kids too.

 

* Don’t email me.  The kid gets loot galore from his grandparents.  Generally all the toys that kids really love that drive the parents crazy.  Payback and karma and all that.

** Cowassianss 3:20.  It’s a good ‘un.  Bible is full of ’em, by the way.

*** Rogers 12:20 – This one makes a lot more sense if you don’t screech it.  At anyone.