Like looking in the mirror

My in laws are visiting us from Florida for a couple of weeks. Before you roll your eyes and cringe imagining yourself in this situation, or dub me certifiable, know that I do find it tough having guests (whomever they may be) for this long a period. But the pluses far outweigh the minuses in this case. My mother in law does my laundry and she cleaned up diarrhea off of Charlie's floor yesterday, so get your eyeballs back into the forward facing position.

On extended stays like this, Nani and Papa become completely entrenched in the boys' daily routine as well as the rules by which they live - the rules of a dictator as we like to say. My father in law experienced the harsh reign of El Diablo (Charlie) the other night just after dinner.

Charlie wanted to play with his Magna Tiles and of course the first amendment in any good dictator's constitution states he is not allowed to play Magna Tiles alone. That's right before the one that bans adults from sitting at the dinner table for more than 5 minutes. And of course because we were also finishing up dinner, Charlie clearly felt his 1st and 2nd amendment rights were being violated. He decided to make his case to my father in law in his best whiny preschooler voice, 'Come play Magna Tiles, Papa. Coooommmmme playyyyyy.'

Papa being a man of a certain age, needs to digest his dinner or things tend to repeat on him which is bad for all involved. You get to know a lot about house guests after 2 + weeks. So he told Charlie he'd be there in a few minutes. A few minutes for a 3 year old is like a morning with no coffee to you and me, slow and thankless. The whining and begging for Papa to come play continued endlessly.

He finally wore him down and my father in law went to play Magna Tiles. Well, apparently he wasn't playing the right way, or with enough enthusiasm, probably violating yet another amendment. Next we hear a raised voice that said, "Papa, you have 2 choices, you can either play with me or you can go to your bed." We then hear some adult chuckling which prompted another threat, "Did you hear me Papa, your options are play with me or go to your bed."

Brian and I were doubled over. It was like listening to a recording of ourselves. We're big into giving choices and find it diffuses potential situations where arguments could ensue, like bedtime. "Charlie, do you want to go to bed with stories or without stories?" Easy. Sometimes though, I do get a little extreme when I'm super frustrated, "You have 2 options, do you want to go to the grocery store or do you want to stay home locked in your closet? It's your choice." Hey, I got the desired end result, regardless of the path I had to take to get there. Remember Dr. Sears, this is a judgment free zone.

Clearly Charlie was taking his cue from my more extreme examples. Bedtime to him is like being locked in a closet. I can't wait to see El Diablo's interpretation of "This is not a restaurant so you'll eat the (insert any food item) I just made for you."