'Fessing Up

I'll come out and say it.  Tonight was rough.  My patience was tried during a forty-five minute time period just before dinner and I wasn't sure everyone was going to survive until bedtime.  Things simply weren't going well. 

While I was trying to get dinner made, my daughter got into just about everything she could.  I wasn't sure how much of it was her trying to get attention, how much of it was just plain busyness, and how much of it was just plain being nosy.  Regardless of which it was, I was having a hard time keeping up with her without burning the food, as she was making messes faster than I could see her making them or get her to clean them up.

First of all, she went into the dining room and got into my china buffet and was trying to scrounge around in there.  Next, she decided to get into one of my decorations in the dining room and take out, as she called it, all the brown Easter grass, which was, in fact, a paper confetti surrounding the decor.  She then pulled a couple other stunts.  Shortly thereafter, just as I was pulling the baked cod out of the oven, Nyssa decided to open a Ziploc bag of rubber bands and proceeded to toss them around the hallway and the family room.  Unfortunately, this I did not see until later; however, she was told that until she picked up the brown confetti paper, she could not eat dinner. 

She either thought I was bluffing or decided to be very bull headed.  Either way, I proved that I could be more stubborn than she and held my ground.  She hemmed and hawed, wailed, and pulled out the hungry card.  "But I'm more hungry than a horse!" she moaned, to no avail and receiving no sympathy from me.  It wasn't until the boys were halfway finished with their supper that she figured she was hungry enough to obey and took the 2 whole minutes to pick up her things. 

I would not be completely honest if I were to say it was the longest 30 minutes of my life, for my children have tested me on numerous occasions in such a manner, but it certainly wasn't the easiest.  She was so busy prying her nose into places it didn't belong that she kept getting in trouble and was eventually sent to her room before bedtime not only for her attitude, but also for her actions.

Don't we all find ourselves in that position?  We'd be lying if we said anything other than that there have been times where we have gotten ourselves into messes of our own accord, simply by being where we didn't belong.  We have all been guilty of sticking our noses into someone else's business instead of focusing on our own situations. 

Then we have the nerve to get upset because someone calls us on it.  Why?  Because we got caught and we don't like it.  We try to explain ourselves out of it instead of humbly apologizing and cleaning up the mess we made.  It'd be best if we just stay out of other people's business from the beginning.  Seeing as how we're human, though, we manage to do it over and over again, to great chagrin.  But when we do, let's own up and apologize for the hurt feelings that we will have inevitably caused in the middle of it all.  It is decisively less painful in the end for all concerned, and it is just the right thing to do.  Oh, and it's a lot easier than being sent away and ignored until we straighten up and behave.