Between fighting the flu early in the week and fighting work insanity late in the week, I am relieved it is Friday night and I am able to sit in front of my computer and eat a DQ blizzard.  We received a treat tonight with Maggie and Laura coming over for pizza and hair brushing.  Yeah, that’s right – not together though!  We ate pizza (before pizza, Mario said grace and stated he was thankful for his cousins and his family and won Maggie and Laura’s hearts forever).  Maria hung on Maggie’s and Laura’s every word; she looks up to them like I looked up to their moms.  

M&M with their cousins

As we ate pizza, Mario began fidgeting in his seat and jumping out of it to dance around.  Jon and I told him to sit down and eat.  He kept talking. Maggie and Laura have always teased us about how lenient we are with discipline and we have always teased them about running a tight ship.  But, I have always admitted that a little bit more of that “hard ship” attitude would be helpful, especially at dinner. Laura took his arm and firmly stated “Mario, your dad spoke to you and asked you to sit.Sit.”  He sat.  We completely ignored him until he began eating his pizza.  He finished it in 5 minutes.  Laura figured out that his one “treasure” that would hurt him the most if taken away was attention.  He lives to be the life of the party.  Take that away, and he is bored.  And that is what we did when we ignored him and paid him no attention – he was forced to eat his pizza to get that attention back. Genius!  

After pizza, Maggie started a bath and Laura got hair products to comb out Maria’s knotty hair.  Maria’s hair looks like strands of gold when it is fully combed out and only Laura has the ability to get it combed to that level without Maria screaming and carrying on like an insane person.   After Maria’s hair, Laura combed mine, and if that was not heavenly, she massaged my head.  I sat at the table lost in another world while Maggie kept the kids busy and Laura kept my head amongst the clouds. 

After dinner, they helped clean up and wrestled with the kids.  They called it a night around 9 pm since they had to take a shower and get ready to hit the bars!  Oh, to be young again.  Jon and I are seriously contemplating paying them a salary per year to live in our attic; I do believe it is the only way that M&M will learn their manners, pay attention, and behave appropriately in society.  Ok, I may be exaggerating a bit but they are good and on Friday night when Jon and I are exhausted, they are awesome!