The Two Sides of the Bed

My children confuse me.  Some days are so awesome.  There are days when they are such joys to be around.  They have finally reached ages that they can play together, and those good days are so much fun.  They follow each other around making the other one giggle.  They can't be more than two feet away from each other.  They still fight, but sometimes not so much on good days.

And then there are horrible days.  Days when they are whiny, rude, obstinate, bored, discontent with everything we do, and they fight all day long.  On those days, nothing I do seems to help, and I eventually lose all will to live...or at least all motivation to continue trying to help them.  I have no idea why some days are so good, and others so so so bad.  There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason.

Yesterday was one of those bad days.  They argued with random kids at the park.  They complained about being at the grocery store.  They misbehaved in the bath and then laughed at me when I got upset at them.  I sent them to their room to re-shelf a pile of books while I straightened up their toy room.  They briefly decided to happily work together on a project which entailed piling up ALL of their belongings onto the built-in desktop in the playroom.  Every toy, dress-up, blanket, stuffed animal...all things in one giant pile of stuff.

Then the obvious next step was the destruction of that pile, which led to toys flying everywhere.  Everywhere!!!

I stood there looking at that mess...at the toys that I had just barely put away in their away spots.  And I could not bring myself to put any of it back where it belonged.  I gathered it all up and took it all away. 

I took all of their toys away.

The new rule is that they can have their toys, one bin at a time, and they must clean them up before getting anything else out.  They seem completely fine with it.  For this one first day, I have loved it, and my house is relatively clean.  I don't know how long I'll do this, but for now, I'm happy not to have piles and piles of little toys dumped all over my house.

Today was also a Good day.  Today, they were pleasant, played well together, played well with other kids (mostly), shared toys, and were content to be at home and play with the one bin of cars and planes they asked for. 

I wish I could figure out what triggers a good one and what triggers a bad one.  Maybe I need to be checking what side of the bed they get out of each day.