My husband plays board games with a group of guys at a friend’s house once a month, leaving me home with the kids for a night after a long day of, well, being at home with the kids. This is typically a Friday night, and, in most months, this night of solo parenting seems to coincide with the end of a week of insanity … but that’s not surprising since most weeks are weeks of insanity at our house with three kids age 6 and under plus another on the way!
My usual survival strategy to get through these game nights without tearing my hair out includes an early dinner (sometimes with me eating during prep time so I’m less annoyed by the constant string of requests for milk refills or other things that interrupt our meals), followed by outside playtime to burn off some of the craziness, and then a loooonng bath for all the kiddos before an early bedtime.
On the night of October 23, 2015, my game night routine was broken upon discovering a twelve-inch ruler wedged in our downstairs toilet bowl. I’m pretty sure this was the doing of the two-year-old. At least I hope it was … because I really don’t want to have a conversation with the older boys about how measuring the length of one’s poop (or, God forbid, someone else’s) is NOT OK. But the homeschooler in me thought, “Maybe we could turn it into a lesson on estimating measurements!” Or maybe that’s just sleep deprivation talking again. 🙂