Just move the tapes....

When my oldest was my littlest child, about 12-18 months old and into everything as they do at that age I had some VCR tapes....do you remember what those were, did I just date you...or myself?  Well I would keep them on the floor in a nice line on a little shelf and she would always want to play with them. She'd pick them up, the tape would fall out of it's case, and it would make such a mess... and I would get so frustrated and I would no sooner get them all put back and guess where she'd go.... well one day I had a light bulb moment....."MOVE THE TAPES"! I think to date this was my most profound mothering moment!! So I moved the tapes and she stopped playing with them, and I stopped being frustrated.
This story came to mind a few weeks ago as I was asking for the 34, 953,434th time for the shoes to get picked up, and could you help me find the remote, and did you bring down your laundry, does the dog have water, can you unload the dishwasher, ..... Now mind you my children have daily chores, each has one that they are responsible for and of course they work together with me to keep it picked up throughout the day, but on this particular day I knew I was gonna go to be praying my motherhood prayer at bedtime, and if goes like this " Dear Lord, please help me to be a better mother tomorrow than I was today...because today I stunk! Amen"
I'm sure I can safely say that most Mother's don't like to be "that" mom, we want to be the fun mom, the snuggle, cuddle, crafty, good cookin..mom. I do too...but I want to do it in a clean house:)
Ok so in my moments of the Esterline "ask-o-thon" I was visited by the light bulb of years past! So I put my kids on vacation! VACATION???!!!???
That 's right I told my kids that they were on vacation for 2 weeks! This meant no chores, wear what you want, heck don't get dressed at all if you want. Do what you want, read what you want, watch what you want! (All within the boundaries that we have already established of course) The idea was for them to have control for 2 weeks. The only thing was bedtime was still in place and our household/family rules. So of course my sweet husband thought I had gone off my rocker...and I wasn't sure that he wasn't' right, but my thought was we all needed to hit the reset button and this was it!
We are a military family and my husband has been deployed more times that I need to recount however one humanistic thing I realized is that when you are the only one that has to do all of it, it is so much easier than when you do it all and there is someone there to help and doesn't'. So I took on all the chores, and cleaning the house, and folding the laundry and putting it away, and emptying the dishwasher, and taking care of the dog, and finding remotes, and putting away shoes, and...and...and...
AND...
2 things happened. The first is I found my Joy again. I didn't mind doing all the things that I had done before because I wasn't' doing them in frustration. Secondly my kids started to do their chores without being asked...even when I would say "You don't have to do that, you're on vacation" they would reply "Its ok mom, I want to".
Sometimes we just need to hit the reset button, it opened my kids eyes to how they could bless me and be part of our team, and it gave me back my joy!