the trolls

Who swapped out my sweet, loving children with the tantrum-throwing, maniacal trolls that spontaneously combust at the suggestion that they may not get exactly what they want exactly when they want it which is NOW.

Lest you think I just lock them in their rooms without entertainment, here's what we've done so far this weekend:

Went to a birthday party where they got to run around with 40 other kids in an indoor playplace which was air conditioned thank-you-very-much and filled with things to climb on, in, under and over. They were fed pizza and juice and cake and ice cream. They went on a treasure hunt with a pirate - a cute girl pirate and then got their faces painted. J was spiderman and D was batman. On top of that, they got goody bags filled with toys and candy. Then, because they were so hopped up on sugar, we went to the mall where they could run around the indoor playground and burn off aforementioned evil substance. Despite all this fun, there were frequent flingings to the floor, by them - not me but don't think for an instant I wasn't tempted. Finally, we headed home the long way in an effort to get them to go to sleep. It worked but it took much longer than I anticipated and still involved some screaming. I won't mention who was doing the screaming.

And today? Well, we hit Target at 9:00am where I promised them I would buy a face painting kit so I could paint their faces like batman and spiderman. Alas, Target doesn't carry face painting kits but I saw some batman pajamas and the boys fell in love so I bought those. But, they wanted toys. And again, much floor-flinging commenced. In the car we go and I ask them if we should go somewhere else for the face painting kit and they whine yessssssss. So, off to Michael's we go. One small meltdown because D's shoelace became untied. THE HORROR!!!! But, disaster was averted and we went into the store. A quick rant about the state of customer service??? PUHLEASE people, look your customer in the eye especially when you're giving a woman with two melty downy preschoolers the bad news that you don't carry face painting kits right now because it's not the season for them. The season??? What the hell season is it that requires someone to paint their kids' faces? Isn't that birthday party season? Isn't that kinda all year long? And by the way, nobody gives a rat's @$$ that you want to take boxing lessons. What they want is to know where the freaking face paint is.
So, we head over to the party store just a mile down the road. They have face paints but no book of samples. I take it anyway with the assumption that I can wing it. Ok, so this part was probably not that fun for J and D but I had to get them out of the house because we sold the jogging stroller today and they would really lose it if we sold it while they were there. We went back home and I painted their faces - both chose batman and they looked really cute. I took a picture and I'm glad I did because shortly after we were finished Jack melted down and was put in his room in a time out where he proceeded to mash his face into his pillow. There's a lovely imprint of a bat on his pillow now. Then it was D's turn to lose it and he went in for his time out. Seriously, it was insane. We had lunch and then there was more whining - J was hungry (huh? didn't you just eat?) and wanted to eat candy, go to the park, blah blah blah. I told them we were going to go for a little ride in the car. Park, Park, Park???? We'll see. J threatens that he's going to be sad, he's going to cry. I tell him it's ok to cry and it's ok to be sad but right now he needs to try to calm down a little and find a way to be happy. He tells me he loves me and now I see he's trying so hard. 3 songs later he and D are asleep and we're pulling into our driveway. That was at 1:00pm. It's now 2:30 and they're still down. Let's hope that's all it takes.