Pump up the volume

My house is a loud one.

Depending on who's home and awake, it can be a very loud one with all its members competing for attention and time. The worst times are in the evenings when all four of us and the dog are home. Usually, my husband and I are trying to watch a TV show that requires us to hear what the characters are saying (why we didn't give this up when we had kids I'll never know).

Children are magnetically drawn to parents that are involved in something that is enjoyable. It doesn't matter where they are or what they are doing, the radar dings and Ivy and Story speed around all obstacles, down stairs, even through closed doors, to position themselves directly in front of the television or whatever object we might be paying attention to.

If mere positioning doesn't do the trick, they will then telepathically conspire to perform. This might be dancing, jumping, making faces, or even fighting with each other. Ivy and Story are very good at this. When they walk in front of the television and see that Mommy and Daddy have are still paying attention to those boring people on the screen, their first step is to stage some kind of theatrical performance.

"Mommy, watch my ballet dance!" Ivy yells as she does some kind of jumpy, twittery move.

"Daddy, wook at me!" Story screams as she attempts to jump off of the coffee table.

This behavior usually results in us pausing the TV, watching the performance and clapping or lecturing (in the case of the coffee table) . Then, we resume viewing.

Not to be outdone, the girls might continue doing different loud movements or dances, screaming for our attention every time. Or, they might just continue to do the same thing, over and over and over and over again until Daddy has reached his threshold and looks at Mommy and says, "I can't hear." I will then get up off of the couch and persuade the kids to go to the other room, sometimes going with them pretending that I am going to play or something. If I'm lucky, my husband won't start the show again till I am back....but I'm usually not lucky.

I race back to the couch and get interested again. In phase two, little feet pitter patter through the hallway. Nothing. Then, the scrape of one of the stools on the kichen floor. Nothing. The sound of a cabinet opening. More feet. "MOOOOOMMMY, Story's on the counter." Sing-song tattle-tell voice.

"Story, get down," I call from the couch.

Five minutes later, chaos reigns. The kids are throwing stuff from the counter, singing, yelling, fighting, whatever works. Most often, I can drown this out by simply turning up the TV and refusing to go in there. Daddy, who does not have this innate ability to ignore his children, gets upset and stops the show again. Sometimes, only one of us go in there, but eventually we call for reinforcements. TV and grown-up time is left until the munchkins are in bed, which is a whole other quandry to deal with.

The best plan is to not watch anything until the children go to sleep. But, sometimes I can't stay up till midnight to watch a TV show.