Our Tenth Anniversary: a TragiComedy in two parts

Yesterday, January 28th was our tenth anniversary. We had glorious plans...well, not glorious, but the kids were going to be at my brother's for the weekend, which is glorious enough. But as plans often do, they got a little, um, complicated as the nailing-down process got underway. So the children stayed put.

Plan B.

We took advantage of a friend's generous heart and three-hour availability and left the younger two with her, then went to lunch. Lunch and a movie or lunch and roller-blading. (Glamorous, no?) So we ended up eating at a tasty little Greek place, picking up a hand-dipped ice cream bar with almonds at the uber-chic Costco restaurant, and wandering the lovely wearhouse whilst we nibbled. Then we drove to the waterfront, gazed at the skyline over the lake and dozed. I'm kidding. Mostly. It sounds anti-climactic, but it was great to spend 3 hours together without crying, tattling, screaming, time-outs or other familiar interruptions.

The real fun was that evening.

After giving the children VERY clear instructions that this evening belonged to their father and me and that anyone out of bed would be flogged, I headed downstairs to join my sweetheart. We plopped on the couch and watched some dumb TV show.

About halfway through the 10:00 news we heard a really big crash upstairs, followed by Lee screaming bloody murder. If my legs were longer, I would've taken the stairs 3 at a time. As they are not, I settled for 2. I burst into the boys' bedroom--which had the light still on--and the first clue my Sherlockian eyes noticed was the large, white bunkbed headboard in the middle of the floor, not too far from where Lee was standing, shrieking, holding his finger.

"One! One screaming child, ah ah aah!"

His index finger was missing a few layers of skin and I expected it to start bleeding at any moment. One of the children had a wet cloth on the dresser (don't recall why), so I wrapped Lee's finger in it. It was already beginning to swell and had a distinct purple tone. Naturally, his wailing and shrieking woke up Cora in our room.

"Two! Two screaming children, ah ah aah"!

Lee's attempts to answer my questions were untelligible, so I had to procure from Abby and Alex what on earth had happened. It seems Abby wanted privacy from the boys, so had pulled the headboard out and leaned it against the corner of the dresser and the edge of Alex's bed to form a small triangular shaped hideaway. I didn't get this at all, because she's got plenty of privacy past the foot of Alex's bed. And the other weird thing is that she wasn't even in it! Lee was in it, and so was Alex. Alex was supposed to be in bed, but got into Lee's little fort because he was invited in. That makes total sense, you know? "I had to, Mom! He invited me!" What?

So at some point Lee was standing up and had stuck his finger in the hole on the top of the bedpost that's intended for a pretty little bedknob. The precariously-leaning headboard got bumped and it left, attempting to take Lee's finger with it. He could bend it, so I was satisfied.

Now before I go on, I need to explain something about Riah. He loves his family. He's also protective of us. When one of his children is hurt--really hurt, he has to supress the urge to go all King Kong and rip apart whatever caused his family pain. (Interesting, because I've never even seen him really lose his temper. Never.)

So I'm peeved that there was so much egregious disobedience. He's ticked that Lee is hurt. I'm irritated that Cora's awake. He's controlling his inner Hulk.

As we attend to the most pressing issue, Lee's finger, we interrogate the children: why is the light on? what happened? what did you see? why is this item of furniture in the middle of the room? You get the gyst. As the tale of misfortune unfolds, we see that Lee wasn't the only one making really dumb decisions. So we turned to corporal punishment.

Our current form of corporal punishment for the older three children is to do something so terrible it's genius: wall sits. Like the ones you had to do in junior high gym class. The kids hate it and we can administer the torture calmly and relatively devoid of emotion. It was Riah's idea, and though unconventional, it works for us...for now.

Anyhow. When the multiple dumb decisions were exposed, it was decided that the whole room was reeking with fault. So Abby and Alex were given wall sits. Now generally they whimper and whine, but due (I think) to the fact that it was after 10 freakin thirty, they wailed, too.

"Four!! Four screaming children, ah ah aah!!!! Four children screaming in the meeddle of the night!!! Ah ah aah!!!

As Lee cried in my lap, his older siblings cried near the door and Cora cried down the hall, I looked up at my dear, wonderful, 10-year husband. I gave him a grim half-smile and said with all the dryness within me,

"Happy Anniversary, Sweetheart."