Sunday, November 09, 2008

Boys Night (and some fun for mom too!)

First - a little background:

We instituted a new policy at our house about a month ago because it was getting harder and harder for me to convince Adam that there was life outside of television, video games, and YouTube. I was also anticipating (and dreading) the arguments that were on our horizon once Adam started piano lessons. So, I came up with a brilliant "pay to play" scheme. In a nutshell, it goes like this:

Adam has to earn his television and game time. He does it by doing things that aren't quite as much fun for him, i.e. he reads for 30 minutes, he earns one hour of tv/games/internet. If he reads, practices the piano, works in his math notebook, or reads to Noah, he gets double time. Writing is at the bottom of his list of fun things to do, so he earns triple time when he writes. I must say that our new system is working better than I ever imagined. Adam actually polices himself very well. He knows that if he doesn't have time in the bank, he can't watch tv or play games and we haven't had an argument about it even once. He actually initiates piano practice most days, and he's writing more now than he ever has before. A side benefit that I've noticed is that Adam is finding lots of other things to do to occupy his time, like playing outside, doing puzzles, and talking to the rest of us. It's been great.

So, fast forward to Friday night. I was going on an overnighter with the girls that I play volleyball with every week and Phil was on daddy duty. Before I left, Phil mentioned that he meant to get the new Indiana Jones movie for the boys to watch but he forgot to stop on his way home from work. I left Friday evening around 5:30 to go pick up one of my friends and she had the movie that Phil wanted so I borrowed it and ran it back to my house. When I went back inside, this is the conversation that occurred:

Adam: Why are you back?
Me: I brought a movie for you to watch.
Adam: When are you leaving again?
Me: I'm not staying. Why are you so anxious for me to leave?
Adam: Dad said that on boys' night we don't have to follow girl rules so I get to watch as much tv as I want.
Me: looking at Phil rather incredulously, but not saying anything
Phil: Yep. That's the rule for boys' night.

By the way, even though I had been gone for less than 30 minutes and it was barely 6:00, Adam and Noah were on the couch, engrossed in SpongeBob and Noah was already in a diaper. When I left I told Phil that Noah would need to go to the bathroom soon and that he would need a diaper for bedtime. Apparently Phil decided that Noah would put his pj's (and diaper) on immediately.

While the boys were enjoying their television watching, diaper wearing, and basically getting a taste of anarchy, I was going out to dinner, playing the Wii, watching a movie, eating junk food, and chatting with the girls until 4:00 a.m. It's nice to be irresponsible once in awhile. (We did reign ourselves in though - a couple of suggestions for the evening that we didn't follow through on included ice blocking and toilet papering a couple of the neighbors.)


Junk food - Round 1: Cookies!

Wii Bowling - Heather had great form, don't you think?

Wii Tennis - I'm thinking that Sue lost this point.


Sara and Sam in an intense cow race

Yes - the flash did wake her up when I took this picture.


I came home on Saturday mid-day and found Phil and the boys hard at play.
Apparently there was a rogue Pokemon on the loose who was sucking the life out of them.
They had to rescue each other by performing unproven medical procedures.

2 comments:

AprilC said...

Okay...Guys cannot deal with potty training..we are going thru the same thing....each time I walk back in Jack is in a pull-up....he is afraid he might poo in his underwear!!! Men...gotta love them.

Phillip said...

And we ate candy until it ran out of our ears. The boys were too full for popcorn later that evening (the bag is still sitting in our kitchen). What Julie didn't see was that Adam and I were wearing diapers too- what the heck!