5 Great Distractions when your kids are driving you bonkers

This Christmas we stayed home and relaxed. Two weeks of intense family time with few social events to fill the calendar sure sounds great, but eventually all of the pancake breakfasts, loads of presents, and nonexistent bedtimes will turn 3 angelic children into 3 complete psychos.

It tends to wear on a Mama's nerves.

I started with an oldie but goodie: "Go play outside with your brothers." Tweenie looked at me with a face that billboarded I'm-pretty-sure-that's-the-stupidest-idea-I've-ever-heard.

"Why don't you guys go help Dad with some yard work," I hinted in Husband's direction.

"Who wants to go grocery shopping with Mama?" he shot back.

OK, fine. So we were going nowhere. It was time to rely on Google for some help. I had to be creative because I had banned certain sites for various reasons ranging from age-inappropriateness to characters or songs that annoy the crap out of me. Thankfully, we came up with some winners.

1. Check out Puke the Pirate. He uses fart power to fly and kills monsters with - what else - puke. Rascal mastered Level 1 while the rest of us giggled at every burp and flatulent outburst. The background music is tolerable too.

Puke the Pirate hurls on an unsuspecting crab interfering with his treasure.

2. As much as I hate the whole WebKinz hype, the site has impressed me with the number of educational games it has. Tweenie is well entertained by several nerdy time killers that manage to sneak some math or science skills under the radar. Rascal and Kye love to watch and shout random suggestions at the monitor.

3. Another wonderful site for preschoolers is FunSchool. Rascal can handle all of the preschool games and Tweenie squeezes in one or two older kids' games between WebKinz sessions. There is a certain snowman game that Rascal plays over and over again until Internet Explorer crashes. He shrieks in rage and pounds like a wild ape on the keyboard until I restart the same game in Firefox.


4. I am a huge fan of pretty much everything on the PBS Kids site. Tweenie loves Cyberchase (a math-based show) and Rascal is all about Super Why (a learn-to-read show). The PBS station runs almost all day anyway, and since I can tolerate most of the shows I must say I am happy to sell out in this particular case.

5. When all else fails, nothing distracts quite like Michael Jackson's History album. We just pop that CD into the stereo, turn up the volume and dance like a couple of maniacs. I can't dance at all, but my efforts burn a lot of calories which in the post-Christmas season is a particularly good idea. It never fails to amaze me how much the kids like this music. Before I realized they thought our music was cool, I used to put on Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker or Swan Lake for Tweenie. Husband was not impressed with the "sissy" music and threatened to haul out his old Def Leppard stuff. I caved.

Now all I have to do is figure out 5 fab suggestions for distracting kids that are driving you bonkers while on a road trip. So far the only suggestion I have is to not go on one. I'll keep you posted, though.