This week, Brad traveled to Alabama yet again.  I spent my week dealing with these scenarios, just to name a few:

* Matthew throwing a heavy plastic gun down the stairs and striking Samuel in the head.

* Matthew slamming so many doors, he has now cleaned every potty in the house as a consequence.

* Matthew locking his bathroom door.

* Samuel locking his bathroom door.

* Many searches for the one key our builder left us for unlocking the bathroom doors.

* Peter holding Matthew’s head underwater in the blow-up pool.  (That was scary.)

* Samuel writing on the van with white sidewalk chalk.  (Who knew sidewalk chalk would scratch the paint on a car?)

* Samuel writing on the tan wall with blue marker.  (And not with a washable marker.)

* Samuel writing on the wall with sun screen.  (Who knew sunscreen would leave a permanent mark on the paint?)

* Samuel biting me.  And scratching me.  And running away from me while screaming.

* Samuel stealing various toys from his brothers and hiding them in his room.

It goes on and on from there.  Those are the ones I can remember at the moment, the highlights, if you will.  Needless to say, I’m tired.  My throat hurts from yelling and I am having to restrain myself from using a sarcastic tone when telling the boys they have, yet again, lost 2 hours of screen time for hitting, pushing, scratching or otherwise harming one of their brothers.

I keep looking at the calendar, but anyway you slice it, there’s still a lot of summer left.