The upside to Pinga having been put in her room so many times already this morning is that I'm getting a lot of work done in small, frequent spurts.
I do worry that this discipline method is ineffective, however.
I want to give you guys some parenting advice. Here it is: if you bribe your children with a Sunday Night Treat (it has to be capitalized) that can be earned or lost, their behavior in church will gradually improve until you can finally make it through all fifty minutes of Sacrament meeting (this is as far as we've made it)without having to take anybody out into the hall for squishing. But the Sunday Night Treat has to be something they actually want--carob bars will not work here.
Things that work for my kids:
root beer floats
popcorn
cookies
rice crispy treats
ice cream
Things that only work on one or two children, if at all:
pudding
cake
pie
fruit crisp
Speaking of crisp: we had some peach crisp at dinner last night that was really something. I did the peaches and Sarah did the topping, and it was super hard for me to not eat the whole pan. I think the fruit of eternal life is a peach.
Here's a funny story for you. Once when John was young his family was eating their standard popcorn and root beer on Sunday night. One of the kids got sick and barfed his popcorn all over the table. Everybody stared in shock, and then John's mom got a spoon and started scraping the popcorn off the table into a bowl to clean it up. One of the other kids thought she was trying to save it, and said, "Mom, it's okay. You can have my popcorn." Ha ha ha ha! So sweet and gross.
John and I were supposed to go to a class last night to learn how to be better teachers, but we decided not to go. They were probably just going to tell everybody not to use Spongebob to illustrate gospel principles, and since we didn't go, we'll still be sinning in ignorance. My mom was aghast that I talked about Spongebob in my YW lesson last week, and she probably thinks less of me . . . nah, probably not. It was just way appropo!
I'm going to put Pinga in the circus as a human truffle pig. She just found the Pez candies I had in my church bag and ate them all. She didn't see me put them in there, and my bag is hung up high in the closet. She also climbs on the stove to get candy she doesn't know about, and found some gum in John's top dresser drawer that he had hidden under some clothes, and then she hid it in the couch downstairs, where our boys found it and re-hid it somewhere else, where she found it again. She's freakishly good at smelling sugar or something.
If anyone was wondering, I am never never never again taking my kids to a soccer game by myself, because I can't take a single more instance of some stranger bringing Pinga to me after she runs away while I am busy making sure the other three children aren't dying.
It's great to not have missed a day crying about what a bad mom I am.
The end.
Pinga says she's going to wash that man right out of her hair. I'm glad to hear that she's ready to move on to a healthier relationship.
Our pre-emptive strike with Captain America has availed us nothing. We're expecting a pink slip any day now.
On the bright side, I was able to get through a few homeworky activities with Superman yesterday before he dissolved into sulky grunts, and The Hulk is excelling. He is almost ready to move on to times tables, and he has earned fifty school dollars for having his head so full of brains.
Pinga's comfort object is dirty laundry. Does this reflect poorly on my housekeeping skills? She won't stay out of the dirty clothes basket!
