What Does It Sound Like?

My two daughters have a chore game after all their homework is done every night. In each room are index cards posted on the back of doors. On these cards, they have each day of the week listed and next to the day they have a chore. (example: Monday-Dust) Along with this we have at least 8 little cards that are thrown into a "hat" (its actually just a cup) and they each pull from this hat 4 cards. On these cards they have listed which room they have to do. The girls then have to look for that card hidden in the room and do that chore. When they are done with that chore, they then place the little card that has the name of the room into a little envelope where the index card is. After all the chores are done I go around and gather the cards back up and check the work that has been done. After a week full of completed chores they then get to pull from another "hat" and get a "treat". Now those of you who know of the dentist attention going on in my house, know that I do not allow TREATS in my house. So instead of a gooey, sugar filled candy treat they get things like, movie of their choice night, or a Free Chore day ticket, just to name a few.


So one night our youngest got upset when she had a chore that she did not want to do and asked a question that I know I asked my parents when I had to do chores I didn't want to do. "why don't you have to do chores?" I chuckled as I heard my own words come out of her mouth and then had a flashback. My husband pipped right back at her and said "want to trade me chores? you can go to work for 10 hours a day and I will wash the dishes". This I also laughed at but felt that I needed to give her more of an actual answer. I then told her that we all do chores in this family although they might not seem like it. I then saw a look on her face that actually said "yeah right". I smiled and said, "you don't ever realise the "chores" I do because I have the same ones everyday. Who just gave you a basket of clean clothes to fold?" she replied "you gave me my clothes to fold" and I replied with "yep, now who washed your clothes?" she tucked her chin into her chest and glanced at the floor "you did". "Yep, I washed Your clothes. What did you eat for dinner tonight?" She replied "yummy German panicakes" I said "they were good hu, who made you that dinner?" she ducked her head again and spoke to the ground "you did". "yep, and how do you think we get the food for you to eat?" with this her reply was "dad has to work 10 hours a day".

With all this conversation I decided that when the girls are working on their chores I would work on things around the house as well. So last night after I got home and made dinner, I started on the dishes that I had just made dirty. I also decided to clean out the fridge of all the leftovers from the last couple of nights (we never eat leftovers, but I feel bad throwing the food away right after dinner). So I take two bowls from the fridge. One has a yogurt fruit salad in it, the other a chicken salad. I go to pour them into the sink and my youngest mumbles something sounding like this: "a white thing jumped into the sink and Steph (my neighbor) came and got it out." I'm thinking to myself 'aw man, the house looked like this and she came over, I bet she thinks that we never clean' but then responded to my youngest "wait, what?" She then does her head duck and talks to the floor "That white thing tipped over and the screw things for the wall fell in the sink and I accidentally turned on the garbage disposal". There was a long pause as I tried to register what the heck she was talking about and then thoughts of money ran through my head. "How did you Accidentally turn on the garbage disposal? You can't even reach it with out a stepping stool, and its a switch so This (as I demonstrated turning on the disposal) cant just happen accidentally. She just looked at me. (on a side note, whenever my kids are caught about to tell a lie- instead of lying, they just don't talk and look at you with a blank stare with the thought of 'oh crap, what do i say' running across their face- and I cant stand it) So i turned to her older sister and ask "Aspen, how did Autumn turn on the disposal accidentally, since she forgot how to talk?" Aspen then replied with a confidence in her voice "well, she put the screws in the drain and turned it on because she wanted to hear what kind of sound it made".


Needless to say I got overly frustrated when I went for the switch and nothing happened, and turned to Autumn and said "So I guess you better trade chores with dad so you can pay for a new disposal". And then turned around so she couldn't see me then laughing, mostly out of fear of what it is going to cost us to fix this and out of flashbacks of things my parents said to me anytime I ever broke something, and about the conversation we had about why the parents dont have chores.


All in all, the disposal was fixed by my husband when he got home, I guess there was still a screw stuck in it.


I love my life!