Monday, January 29, 2018

Can We PLEASE Have Nice Things?

Adam and I are finally doing some some updates to the house, all of which are totally necessary and WAY overdue. We bought the house just over thirteen years ago, and some of the things we're replacing were not only there when we bought the house, but were original to the house...meaning that things like our family room carpet was actually twenty three years old. And since the family before us had young kids who spilled, and WE have young kids who spill (and spill a LOT, and always when it's colored), that carpet was an absolute disaster of stains. We had rules, of course, but the girls tend to "forget" rules a lot. And frankly, the carpet was so embarrassingly bad, it was hard to act like one more spill really made a difference.

We're great at talking about what we want to do, but we are awful at pulling the trigger. So when we finally get something new, we're incredibly excited and because we know we'll be living with it for a long time, we're pretty nervous.

Last year, we finally upgraded our old TV. We were blown away with how amazing it was compared to our old, very dark TV. We had it mounted and we gave the girls crazy instructions about NOT TOUCHING THE TV. Or the area near the TV.

Then we had some family over, and the next day, we noticed fingerprints and a scratch and basically lost our minds and yelled that this is why we can't have nice things! We've never gotten full confirmation on the culprit. All the circumstantial evidence pointed in one direction, but when it's family, you don't want to accuse. And honestly, what would accusing do? There was no point. We were confident the girls didn't do it, and we just doubled down on the rules. They're old enough now where we feel like we CAN have just a few nice things, and they understand

So anyway, now, a year later, we finally have beautiful new furniture and a brand new carpet in that room and it's gone from looking like a mess to looking like a grown up family room. Yet considering how Madison is the master of spills and has put me to the test multiple times, we were nervous. We talked and talked about the new rules for the girls. No eating on the couches. No shoes on the new carpet. No colored liquids or open top cups. I got a few trays at ikea to put things like pretzels and water bottles on, and we spent plenty of time during the installation of the carpet drilling them on the new rules, which basically went like this:

Me: The new carpet looks so good! Remember, we're not having any drinks in there except water!

Girls: Ugh, we KNOW!

Me: And the water needs to be in a water bottle with a lid.

Girls: You TOLD us.

Me: I know, I know. I just want to be sure. And we're going to keep all food on a tray, right? And only stuff like pretzels.

Girls: MOM. We KNOW.

Yet less than two hours later, right after the installation was complete, as we are in there doing school work:

Me: Madison, I know it's only water, but that bottle you're using leaks if it tips over. Can you make sure to put it on a tray?

Madison: It's my lemonade from Panera. It looked the same as water.

Me: (loses mind)

So yeah, I'm not ready to stop drilling them on the rules yet. And Adam and I are just waiting for the first stain.

And I kept a piece of the old carpet, just in case I need to test out some stain removal. Or put a child on it like an island.


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