We are one week away from moving and my house looks like a warehouse of boxes and smells like cardboard, but today, I am grateful for boxes – the perfect medium for building a wall! My children love each other, and most of the time even like each other, but today it seems they can’t look at each other, be within 5 feet of each other, or hear each other without feeling the need to report it to me.

Ava: Mama, Eli called me a poopy butt.

Me: Do you have a poopy butt?

Ava: No

Me: Then you know he is lying and you don’t need to worry about it.

Eli: Ava is looking at my screen.

Me: Does that mean you can’t look at your screen?

Eli: No

Me: Then it doesn’t matter if she looks at it.

Ava: Eli is breathing really loud

Me: Excellent. That means he is not dead.

Ava: Eli, Mama said you’re not dead

Eli: Mama, Ava said I’m not dead

This is when I silently walk out to the garage, grab the tallest box I can find, walk back into their school room (ignoring the increasing number of questions about what I’m doing), set the box on top of a chair between their desks, give each kid a set of headphones, and calmly walk back to the kitchen to press the start button on my Keurig. Extra dark coffee today.

Happy Friday! Oh, and the kids just finished their work and are playing together, laughing and dancing in the family room, and listening to Google playing “The Best Day of my Life” song. If you think Ohio weather is fickle, spend a day with the moods of a 7 and 5 year old. Aye yi yi!