After writing my last post, I came out of my bedroom and saw that a few of the cousins had started cleaning up. Miraculously, the sofa sections were pushed back where they belong and the cushions were actually on it. The clothes in the girls' room had been picked up out of the floor and the doll clothes (that I had missed in my cleaning fury) had been stuffed into the storage drawer. The girls even had dressed the dolls back into the outfits they were originally wearing when everyone got here - I guess they realized I was serious. Even the boys' room was.... sort of... beginning to be.... cleaned up... a little. So I was somewhat mollified, especially after Andy gave them a good going-over about their lack of cleanliness.
Then we took them home. The oldest had taken my Jeep to his house, leaving their people-mover behind to tote kids. I found out after the fact that they then took it down to Auburn to move him in, because one of their remaining vehicles was not running and the other didn't have a/c. NOT happy about that, but what can you do? On the way down, we put more gas in their vehicle, and returned it to them with about half a tank. My wonderful SIL said, "Oh, well, that works then - yours has half a tank, so that's fair!" Uh, no, we moved YOUR kids around for a week because you couldn't take them to Auburn with you and you both wanted to go to his orientation. In MY vehicle. A FULL tank is fair. Then we get in it and find that it has - you guessed it - about 1/8 of a tank. Soooo not happy.
And now I have to spend my week before my trip cleaning up from the last week. Jaxom's room was left in a shambles - toys and trash all over the floor. We got in there and started cleaning, and I found about a bazillion broken things. Not, broken because it's flimsy and got played with a lot. Broken because people went out of their way to step on it. Broken because someone deliberately broke it. Example: Imriel got a nice mag-lite at VBS this year. Someone opened it, pulled the battery leads off and broke them in half, and straightened out the spring on the battery compartment cover. I found a bazillion nerf bullets with the tips snapped off, hidden under a rug. A farm set that somehow survived being played with every day since Jax was 3, started out in pristine condition at the beginning of the week. Now - all the tractors are broken to pieces - the exhaust pipes snapped off, one had its cab canopy snapped off and broken to pieces, and all the little trailers and hay balers broken. And there were many, many more things like that. Pages ripped out of books. Every nerf sword broken to pieces. The list is much longer but I'll stop here. Many of these things were both good-quality and well-loved. Some of them were inexpensive and flimsy things of the type that you expect to break if not handled carefully - but if my 2- and 5-year olds can take care of things, why can't kids who are 6, 7, 7, 8, 12, 12, 12, 13, 14, and 18? And don't get me wrong, I know it wasn't the older kids. Judging from the fact that it was in the boys' room, and that things were broken in mass quantities and the pieces hidden, I can deduct exactly who it was and that it was most likely deliberate. You might accidentally break one bullet in the nerf gun. You don't normally break 30 by accident.
I am sick. Both from wondering why a kid would act like that, and from seeing my kids cry when they saw their stuff broken. At least it is a good life lesson for them - if you care about a toy, don't leave it out to get broken. I would say "put it up high", but some of the stuff that got brought out and broken was up on the highest closet shelf. So sad for my kids, especially Jax. Now the question is, do I bring it up or just smile next year when they think they are coming back?
Posted by
Karen