Five Hours to Laundry

My children took five hours to fold and put away their laundry today.   Five hours.  And the only reason they completed it in less than six hours was because we took away the entertainment we allowed them to have while they worked on the apparently arduous, cruel and unusual task.  

My husband lost his temper at my son who nearly lost his mind when I brought him more laundry that I had washed for him and then separated.   The children put things in my hamper and when I do my laundry, they get those pieces done "for free."   Putting the items on the coffee table was apparently an unpardonable sin as my son nearly flew into a conniption fit with rage at the attempt to help him in this fashion. 

I asked him if the chair would be better and he nodded yes, that would help (minus the helpful words) and then I left him the laundry basket, which he also mumbled about wanting.   We left them at that point in the expectation that they would finish the task, but that was short-lived as my son was angry and needed help with motivation and my daughter, who had had so much energy when she was lounging on our bed playing audio games on Alexa, had become completely exhausted and enraged at the same time. 

We did not help them.   They tried valiantly to rebel, but it didn't work.   My daughter was caught again, over an hour later, at still not having put up the clothes that were folded and waiting on her bed in the hamper, and almost became hysterical because she was going to miss out on the family game of live Among Us.  

They explained that they didn't like doing the laundry.   I had some rather lengthy explanations about how I didn't like doing it either, but who exactly did they expect to do their clothes?   It was their responsibility and <enter lengthy discussion from me> "fine, Mom, you always take forever to explain something, just stop talking about it."  And that's when they started working. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was so angry about the laundry and had finally gotten a portion of her things in her basket to take upstairs.   She said in a cross voice to us, "your calm voices are making me mad."

The Big Boy Update:  I came downstairs and wanted to message Clockspring the latest news about how a company had paid us for some work we'd done with their filaments.   My son was looking at the screen, knew who I was typing to and said, "he doesn't know the secret of how to type without making mistakes when you're on your phone.   It's using your pinky."  Then he did the muhaha evil laugh and continued, "and he'll never know, he's not powerful enough.   You have to infuse it with blood and then only can you use it.  And you will never tell anyone this piece of information Mom, right?  Because if you do, lives might end.  Do you understand that?"   I typed it as fast as I could and when he realized what I was doing he gave me the, "seriously, mom?" look.  I read what I'd typed and he had a very cute little grin on his face, knowing I'd typed what he'd been saying because I thought it was funny enough to tell someone.   Sometimes, even when children are being silly, they like to know that they're funny and interesting.