Waiting for Dad

The children get really impatient when they feel that Matt has been at work for long enough. Normally around 4 pm, they begin to get antsy. Recently this period of unrest has been starting earlier and earlier. Yesterday it began at 6:30am...and lasted until Matt walked in the door at 5pm. I feel like most of my days are spent just distracting them from the fact that Daddy isn't home. Enter: Anne, the coordinator that you are so lucky you didn't have work your wedding or birthday party.

The table is littered with time-consuming activities. The only issue is that "time-consuming", for a 3-year-old (average age of our children), is about 43 seconds.

Some really "good" ideas I had:

-Drawing a bulls-eye on the sliding glass door with a dry-erase marker so that they could do target practice with their suction cup darts and nerf guns.

- Giving each of the kids a duster and telling them that the one who got rid of the most dust would get a conversation heart.

- Putting a cold bowl of water next to their warm bath so they could play color-changing cars while they bathed.

- Folding socks as a family. We all know how this turned out before.

- Memorizing the alphabet in Spanish...this one was a little tricky because Tommy is still struggling with the English alphabet. :)

- Making a competition out of who could make Nathan laugh the most. This was, by far, the worst of my ideas. Not only do they come from a long line of insane Schwalms who can turn a handshake into a competition, but look at Nate's face...

He's saying: "REALLY, MOM?!?! REALLY?"