Hello? Anybody Home?

Well! Wouldja lookie here? I bet you thought I'd forgotten about my little bloggy home. I think most bloggers can identify with the feeling of having so much you want to say, and not being able to get it out in any kind of coherent way. We resort to lists, memes and just posting lots and lots of photos. Then we neglect the blog for about 6 weeks or so, only to find that the problem is completely out of hand. And that is where you find me, your intrepid author, today.

Hm.

I want to tell you about a little phenomenon I like to call Trickle-Down Behaviornomics. It's what happens when one kid gets in trouble and ALL the kids just snap in line and all of a sudden, I'm surrounded by helpful, respectful goody-goodies.

We had an issue yesterday with our oldest, who will soon be 18. It was fairly serious, and I treated it as such. The real-life consequences of her choices will be borne, along with some loss of privilege that will have to be earned back through trustworthy actions. First, I have to give her credit...once the error became known and the consequences began to be outlined, she took it exceedingly well. She was humble and contrite, and we were closer at the end of the discipline session than at the beginning. Her parting words were, "I'm going to earn your trust back by Friday..." I love it when discipline has its desired effect.

Well, you've never seen 3 such well-behaved younger siblings in all your life! I believe I might have contracted a touch of the sugar-diabetes from all the sweetness that flowed in our home yesterday. I think they wanted to help Hannah over her difficulty, and I know they wanted the atmosphere to lighten up, but I hope that they also took a little lesson for themselves from their sister's misbehavior and will perhaps spare themselves at least a little trouble later on by learning from someone else's mistakes.

I should tell you, however, that my cherubim were somewhat less cherubic today. All 5 of the kids woke up with cold symptoms. Little Jesse has been re-named Snot Rocket, Seth told me today that he almost sneezed his eyeball out and Claire's lips are "chack" so she's using "chack-stick" like it's her job. Seems like low-grade temps are also uniformly distributed throughout the tribe, along with the perfunctory whiny voices, short tempers and general crabbiness. School today consisted of learning the first verse of our church's hymn of the month and lots of reading aloud because those are the only things this teacher can do with an 8-month-old who seems convinced that nursing is the cure for all that ails him.

So, now you know where we are. If I get a turn at the computer again before Jesus comes back, I'll fill you in on some fun things that happened at Easter and ask some probing hair coloring questions. Or I'll just post a bunch of photos. Thanks for stopping by!