Customer Service paging Mama

Have you ever suffered the cringing embarrassment of being paged in a public place because of your child - or worse, his behavior?

We flew back to my hometown this summer, and while the trip wasn't as bad as I'd feared I did have the pleasure of public humiliation at least once on the return flight. Rascal refused to be buckled up and spazzed around in his seat doing the back-arching-thingy and squawking. This is bad, apparently, as the tinny intercom voice informed me:

"Ma'am, you must control your child. Please secure his seatbelt immediately; this is for his own safety as well as the other passengers'."

Hmm, really?

It seems someone is always trying to get my attention, especially my three darlings. Even though I try to give everyone 33.33%, it just doesn't cut it.

Until recently, I read to each kid individually before bed. This meant that bedtime started around 7:30 and lasted until around 10:00. At some point I caught on that no one needs to pee 4 times in 15 minutes. For a while they even had me going with really long bedtime prayers. What a sucker!

I decided to streamline the whole process. House comes on at 9:00 and that is now my back-end limit on bedtime. I have decided on the following rules:

1) I read to everyone from a book of my choosing for 30 minutes.
2) everyone brushes their teeth only once.
3) everyone goes to the bathroom properly only once.
4) everyone gets one cup of water on their bedside table, and if you spill it accidentally-on-purpose, tough luck.
5) prayers can be detailed, but efficiently presented.

If all these demands are not met, I feel justified in bringing out the Dragon Lady.

Last night the new regime was in effect. Everyone was enjoying the book I had chosen, and since I knew it would only be one book, I indulged them by doing all the silly voices.

However, Rascal quickly realized that there were no cars in this book. He started to grunt his dissatisfaction. No reaction.

He jumped on the bed and whooped. Again, no response. (I'm trying that new-fangled theory my pediatrician is spouting which says you should simply ignore undesirable behavior instead of punishing or distracting. So far I think this is total crap.)

He persuaded Kye to jump on the bed with him. Unintentionally, my eye flicked over. He smiled; I was busted! It's hard to regain control after a breach like that.

I continued on, noting Rascal's approach in my peripheral vision.

One last warning: "Mamaaaaaa....."

I kept reading. He shoved his finger up my nose.

That got my attention. Everyone thought it was hilarious, even me - although not until this morning.