Finally

Do you ever read the Little House books and feel like a useless slacker as a parent? I can't even keep the laundry folded (machine washed and dried, natch) and I open the books to see that Ma is making her own cheese. Maybe I would have less of a laundry backlog if my kids' wardrobes consisted entirely of clothes I made for them. Or maybe they would just run around naked and CPS would come after me.

Anyway. I want to know how much of the kids' obedience in the Little House was real and how much was Laura looking back through the gilded haze of memory and thinking, "I never talked to my ma like the kids these days." I mean, I recognize that obedience was valued more highly then ("Casabianca," anyone?), but I have to wonder if there was quite as much yes-ma-ing as the books suggest.

My kids are learning v-e-r-y slowly about not interrupting. Some of it, I think, is that they've never been exposed to the rule that children should be seen and not heard. Some of it is also that they're not going to be taken out to the woodshed for interrupting. But OH MY GOODNESS sometimes it frustrates me.

We try to be consistent. (I say, "Are you bleeding? Do not burst in on a grownup conversation unless you need stitches.") It's slow.

In addition to not interrupting grownup conversations, I've been trying to teach the kids that prayer time is inviolate. If I am sitting on the couch with my breviary or my rosary, they need a seriously urgent reason, like fire or flood, to interrupt me. This has been an equally slow process, perhaps the more so since I don't really want to bellow, "Stop interrupting me NOW! Can't you see I'm PRAYING?!" See the power of prayer, kids? Wouldn't you like to be an ogre too?

But! This morning I was sitting on the couch with the Office of Readings when Alex told Marty, "Go get Mom!" Thump thump thump came the 8yo's feet down the stairs. "Mom," he called from the stairwell, and then he caught sight of me. He said, sotto voce, "No. The house is not on fire." He ran back upstairs. "It'll have to wait, Alex," he said.

I did a little couchbound happy dance and turned back to Deuteronomy.