Well Behaved Children....I have them. Who knew!

The behavior my children display on a daily basis, while I'm present, shocks me. Yes, they get along 99.9 percent of the time. They are usually well-mannered with lots of pleases, thank yous, and excuse mes. However, when I tell them to quiet down, and just sit still for a few minutes while I get something done.......

Somehow my kids think I've said: Scream your heads off, run around our home until you feel like you're going to puke, and fight over stupid things like the television remote.

This is what I get while we're home. The pleasures of motherhood, I suppose.

What do other people get? Sweet, well-behaved, angels.

How is this fair? None of them had horrible pregnancies that lasted 9 months. None of them had to be pulled out of work early, because their bodies were ready to give out from being pregnant. None of them had machines hooked up to them each week, just to monitor how the baby was doing.

No, that was me. ME.

We took the LIRR again this week. The kids had only two days off for their Spring Break, since our district found the need to keep our ENTIRE WINTER RECESS WEEK. Flippin' idiots. I had a blog event to do in the city, which I knew the kids would love, since it was at McDonald's on 6th Avenue (or Avenue of the Americas, whichever version of the street you prefer.)

Little angels on the way, and on the way home, even with a rude woman who sat down next to me, and across from The Boy (who, let's face it, is FOUR, and his feet stick out from the seat because he's so tiny, so he will end up ACCIDENTALLY knocking into your legs that you have insisted on sticking out into his "leg zone" on the train,) they were extremely well-behaved.

Well, The Boy fell asleep after he knocked a notebook out of his sister's hand, and I looked at him and as I picked it up asked "Are you out of your mind? Totally rude." He buried his face in the seat, crying, and Little Miss tried to make him feel better. He just cried himself into a nap. SCORE for the entire train.

The annoying hag that sat next to us got off a few stops before we did, and it was basically just us, and a pleasant man sitting in the car. When the woman left, and The Boy was up, and still being rather good, the man said to me "Your kids are very well behaved. This train ride is long from Penn Station. They were really fantastic."

I smiled "thank you for that. I appreciate it a lot. It's hard, they are use to coming with me a lot these days, but it's still a lot to ask of them to be so still for such a long period of time when people are so uptight when sitting across from a four year old."

He laughed, and said "yeah, not the loveliest of ladies, but he was good. Even when he wasn't sleeping."

I told him it's from cracking the whip at home, and he said I sounded like his wife.

Glad to know I'm not the only one who believes in raising well-behaved children, who are respectful, and know they aren't the only people on the planet, and should not think anyone owes them a damn thing.

And no, I don't have an actual WHIP at home that I crack......at least not on the kids. But that's a whole different blog topic, and this is family show.......with cursing.

The cracking the whip is a metaphor, no whips are being used on my kids. Not even the cherry licorice kind.