At one time, I DID have control. At one time, we all sat calmly and talked about stuff. Normal stuff. Mr. Wonderful and I tried to teach the kids table manners. We would talk to them about current events in the news and about school and ballet and soccer. It was calm and relaxing.
But at some point in the past couple of years, something happened. My kids starting...performing. And trying to outdo each other. They would get the giggles and I would get stern and Mr. Wonderful would reach for his wine glass and pretend he didn't notice the craziness.
Their hilarity and comedic competitions frustrated me and the more frustrated I got, the more manic they became.
For example, last night we sat down to a lovely dinner of grilled salmon, rice and green beans. A nice, normal dinner. Except that The Boy, for some reason, decided to sit down at the dinner table with green hair and sunglasses on. (The green hairspray was leftover from homecoming last year.) The Princess sat down with a black fedora (leftover from a Fosse inspired musical theatre dance she did a couple of years ago).
I tried to just ignore it. I really did. But clearly, my drama deprived children wanted more attention. They began hamming it up and feeding off each other and cracking themselves up. Eventually, I went for my camera. I figured that anyone who sat down at the table with green hair was clearly BEGGING to be featured in the blog! Of course, when The Boy saw the camera he decided to dive in the pool to wash the green out of his hair and thwart me.
While the photo is blurry, I believe you can still see the green all over The Boy's face and hair!
And then there is the dinner conversation. Last night, The Boy was telling us about something that happened at camp. His camp refers to the girls as "pink" and the boys as "blue" and has a hard and fast rule about "no purpling." I asked The Boy something about purpling and Mr. Wonderful (who had clearly not been paying attention to the conversation) asked incredulously, "Did you just ask our son if he was porking someone at camp?"
Sadly, no, I'm not kidding. This is a true story.
Naturally, this comment produced much guffawing. Once the laughter died down, I explained the concept of "purpling" to Mr. Wonderful and gently suggested that he pay attention to the conversation henceforth.
He responded with the witty observation that purpling is a stupid term and they SHOULD call it porking because it makes more sense.
He said this at the DINNER TABLE.
Which is when the kids REALLY began to compete with each other with witticisms and comedy.
I could see that dinner was, once again, spiraling out of control.
I resolutely tried to steer the conversation into somewhat respectable channels but the kids were determined to continue their comedy routine and amuse each other.
After dinner, the hilarity continued as the kids tried to outfit poor old Lucy in a beanie so that they could "speak Eminem-ish" to her and say, "Sick nasty, Dawg!" (Which is The Boy's new favorite saying, and apparently means good.)
Lucy, while a sweet dog, is not always the brightest bulb in the pack. She thought this was a really, really, really fun game and that the object of the really fun game was to rub her belly.
Yeah...sick nasty, dawg.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
So, that was our dinner. It was...unique. Don't you want to come enjoy a nice, tranquil meal with us at our house?
Because Mr. Wonderful and I are completely aghast at this recent behavior of our children, we decided to try to calm the atmosphere down a bit with a nice family movie.
Really, I don't know WHERE this crazy streak in the kids is coming from. I'm just baffled.
