You Kids are Driving Me Nuts! UGH!

Imagine what it is like to be the lone female living in a household of five sons and one husband. It's very much like living in a fraternity..........lots of farting, eating, breaking things and puking. Not to mention the bickering, fighting, rough housing, and towel twapping. I can honestly say that I don't ever remember a time when my girlfriends or my sister and I ever snapped each other with wet towels.

My boys go for blood! It's not a friendly game of tag, it's all out war, shield your eyes, someone is definitely going to get hurt. The towel snapping match usually ends with someone in tears, someone in time-out and me yelling "You kids are driving me NUTS!"

UGH! I say that a lot. And, it's true! They do drive me nuts.

I was the girliest girl on my block growing up. I played with dolls everyday. I had a suitcase filled with Barbies (Midge, Dawn, Malibu Barbie, my brother's GI Joe, the Sunshine family and of course, Ken, that hunk of plastic perfection) and I had a gorgeous three room pink Barbie house for my collection with furniture for every room. That was until Ronnie Cruz ran into it with his bike and broke the roof while his sister and I were having a nice afternoon of playing outside with our Barbies! That's a boy for you.

A few years ago I found myself saying "You kids are driving me nuts!" all the time to my boys. And, even though it's true, I didn't want them to blame themselves just in case the men in the white suits rang the doorbell. I wanted their memories of home to be somewhere in between the Osborne's and the Cleaver's - preferably closer to the Cleaver's. But let's be realistic, I don't think June ever ran outside, got into her car and kept driving until the crying stopped.

I decided one day that I would no longer say the words, "You kids are driving me nuts." I think I was secretly afraid that my continuous declaration of my pending insanity might make it so. I replaced those words with "This is very exciting!" Nothing else changed, only the words. I kept the tone, kept the level of intensity, but just changed the words. How hilarious!

The next time I entered a bedroom with the mattresses turned on one end leaning against the wall with one boy bounding down the "slide" and the other dumping all the clothes out of the dresser drawers to make stairs so he can do it to......I proclaimed to all the world "This is very exciting!" It was a true statement, just like the former one about going nuts. It was just funnier. Now my boys think I really am nuts! They can think what they want.