Ben and Zach eventually resurfaced and landed on the couch with the laptop where Ben immediately launched into wall-to-wall Minecraft-speak. (Minecraft, for the uninitiated, is this computer game all the boys between 7-12 are into. I don't pretend to understand it and I don't really get the premise of it, but it seems to involve building things, collecting things, blowing things up and killing these weird, cubey guys... )
Anyway, Ben played for awhile, yammering on about redstone ore and creepers while Zach watched.
Working on dinner in the kitchen, I kept peeking into the other room, waiting for the telltale glazed-over look from Zach that I often see on the faces of Ben's friends when they come over. Ben is utterly oblivious to other people much of the time, and can easily dominate a conversation with things that mean nothing to the other person involved.
Interestingly, it seemed to be going okay. After about fifteen minutes though, I reminded Ben he needed to let Zach play too instead of just watching.
"Oh but I WANT to watch him play!"Zach piped up.
"You sure?" I asked.
"Yeah!"
Seriously? (insert chorus of angels sound effect here) Okay, then. Awesome. Perfect! Wonderful! Knock yourselves out!
All was well with the world. Upstairs, I could hear Simon, my hoarder child, giving Adam the tour of every single piece of minutia in his bedroom.
Eventually, they all tired of their respective activities and headed down to the playroom.
When I was finished, I headed down to check on things and that's when I found Simon sobbing on the second step.
Crap-tastic. Tears already?! It was not even 5p.m. yet. This suddenly had the very real potential be a long evening, like Red Bull and Tylenol long.
As it turns out, Simon had definite plans about what he wanted to do (Legos) and everyone else wanted to play in the moonbounce. I actually had, in fact, foreseen this problem, as Simon is the youngest of the four of them by two years. I had just hoped it would work itself out and they'd all find some common ground.
I brought him up to do his homework and talked to him about being a good host. He was taking it as a personal affront that his Lego plan had been rejected. Poor kid. Stinks to be the little brother sometimes.
Meanwhile, downstairs... three boys in a moonbounce. Yep. It sounds a lot like what you'd think it would sound like. LOUD. But happy loud.
Simon finished his homework and I walked him back downstairs. Adam had done his homework at school, so just the oldest boys were left.
"Ben and Zach, why don't you guys come up and do your homework?"
"Nah!" came the stereo reply.
Hrm. I clearly have a lot to learn about this authoritative voice thing.
"Nice try. Let me rephrase that... hey guys, it's time to come up and do your homework."
"Ooooookay," said Ben, realizing he was not going to win.
"My mom lets me do it at night." said Zach. His look told me he was waiting to see if I was buying what he was selling.
I had a little pep-talk with myself right then. I briefly considered just letting it go. I HATE making other peoples' kids do things they don't want to do. And I really wanted them to have fun while they were over. But, on the other hand, I knew by the time they got home, it was going to be late and, if I were his mom, especially on this particular day, homework is kind of the last thing I'd feel like dealing with.
So I did what any good mom would do. I text-tattled. Shameless, I know.
I showed him the text and he laughed. Busted!
Upstairs we went, leaving Adam and Simon (who had come to his senses by this point) happily playing Wii. Whew! Crisis averted and back to four happy kids (and Jonathan whose mood changes minute to minute). Five boys on a school night? Piece. of. cake. Right?
Well, mostly? (to be continued... again...)
2 comments:
Text-tattled! LOVE!
This is awesome.
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