So remember the episode about Phil, the fun dad, and Claire, the not-fun mom. They try to switch places and it totally goes wrong. Well, we lived out that episode today only in not-quite the same manner. More in the usual roles: Jeremy, the fun Uncle, and Jess, the not-fun Aunt.
Not the entire day - just the night time routine - which I'll explain at the end. This is just the foreshadowing part ;)
Day was good! We went to church this morning. It was awesome because Madi was able to sit with five friends who were in her camp group and she was super excited about seeing them all. This was part of the reason we wanted her to go to camp - to make better friends at church - and it's great to see that this is happening!
We came home for lunch, some Pocket Legends playtime on the iPod and to hang out for a little while. Then we went to my parents' house where the girls went swimming for a long time and had some ice cream treats. And pizza for dinner. Then we came home which is when the real fun began.
The night routine has always been the same - get on pjs, brush teeth, go potty, do devotional with Riley in her room, then read book in Madi's room with Madi and pray together. We've been thinking it'd be great to start doing devotionals separate with Madi so that she can get more alone time with each of us as well as more in-depth Bible study for her age. We have been having Madi leave her iPod downstairs to charge at night for a few reasons. The main one being she was playing too many games on it and watching videos off of YouTube (which I'm not comfortable with as there are too many not-ok videos out there and we can't monitor that if she's in her room alone). The stimulation from them was keeping her up very late at night and she was waking up super early in the morning due to not sleeping well. Since she's kept it downstairs, her sleep is much deeper and better and she's sleeping well.
So our new routine of doing devotionals separate was going to start tonight. She hasn't had her iPod upstairs since coming back from camp two nights ago. Enter the episode: Good Cop, Bad Cop. Jer and I had agreed that the iPod would stay downstairs once we came up for night time. Madi knew this, but asked Jeremy if she could play Pocket Legends with him (which would mean iPod would go upstairs). Jer responded with "we'll see." Madi said "Like Maybe?" He said "Well possibly." So we all started the night time routine.
Right as I'm taking Riley into her room to read, Madi says "So Uncle Jeremy I'm going to go get my iPod" and bolts down the stairs. So I looked at Jeremy like "What? Huh?" and totally confused. He does a sheepish grin and says "We're going to play some Pocket Legends." And I said "What? Huh? Why are you playing that? I thought we talked about how the iPod was going to stay downstairs for nighttime. That it was going to help her sleep to not be playing games and now you're changing your mind." And then we talked about how the nurse with Riley always said "Begin as you mean to go on." Basically meaning that whatever your expectation for something is, set that expectation from the beginning so that you're not having to change your mind later. I was totally mad because we had agreed on a certain way of doing it, he was all set to do it and then decided to change his mind because he wanted to play his game. And then I looked like the Bad Cop for Madi and she was mad at me. However, she knew the rule in the first place and chose to find his weak spot (his love for his games) and was able to work him until she got what she wanted. So I wasn't very happy about that either. So I was the bad cop tonight. She put the iPod back downstairs and Jeremy had to wait until later to play his game. I'm definitely one for consistency and doing what we say we're going to do. Usually Jer is on this as well, until it comes to his games.
I figure if we want her to get used to keeping her iPod downstairs, we need to be consistent about it. Don't mind them having fun with the game at all, but considering they played it for hours today, bedtime can stay bedtime. At this point I'm more annoyed at my husband than anything for making me out to be the bad guy and going against what we had agreed on. So I'll stop my rant :)
Will definitely be watching that "Modern Family" episode again. Related to it before, but will probably laugh incredibly hard watching it a second time!
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