House Rules

We've got a pretty good routine going since Caleb has been in kindergarten. I'm the first one out of bed and try to rouse my 6-year old who just so happens to NOT be a morning-person (wherever did he get that trait??). Chris and Caleb are out the door when they're ready, fed, and dressed, which leaves me still in my jammies with two silly kids here at home. Since Connor is a little monkey these days, I spend most of my morning wrangling him and keeping him away from lamps, electrical cords and climbing up the stove, so I don't usually get to take a shower until he's down for his morning nap. Through trial and error, I've come up with some house rules (aka "what not to do while Mommy is in the shower") and ask Hannah to recite them every day before I go upstairs. Now, when I say, "What don't you do while Mom is in the shower?", she answers with:

* "Coller up to Mom" (No yelling up the stairs if you need something. Coller = Holler in Hannah-language.)
* "No answering the phone" (She is the child who WILL answer the phone if it rings. We also learned that she can also accidentally call people and we found this out at....Chris' office. Oops.)
* "No answering the door" (Yes, this, too, was something that almost happened. I sure hope the Schwan's man didn't mind seeing me in my robe that day because I came flying down the stairs VERY quickly when I saw Hannah open the door after the doorbell rang!)
* "No going in Connor's room" (One of Hannah's favorite bonding moments with her brother is when she goes into his room, turns on the light, and plays with toys in his crib with him. She doesn't care that he's sleeping when she turns on the light.)
* "No going outside" (This is more worrisome for me in the summer months, which is almost worse because then Caleb is also here and he doesn't know these rules as well as Hannah does.)
* "Cook" (Yes, no cooking while I'm upstairs. No, I didn't not add this rule to the list---that was purely Hannah's doing.)

These rules also mean that often times, while I'm in the shower, a little shadowed figure will appear in my bathroom and tell me the most trivial of things ("Mom, on the show I was just watching, Mickey Mouse went up a beanstalk!") but it's worth it to keep my house in one PIECE while I have a moment of PEACE. :)