5 Ways Mom Ruins our Fun

We know she loves us, don’t worry about that… but sometimes it seems like she’s just making up a whole pile of rules to ruin our fun.

For instance, we’ll be in the middle of a huge independent project and she’ll come along, usually shriek, and be like, “You can’t use water guns to fill up the bathtub! And why are you shooting water into the toilet? Ewwwwww.”

And just like that, we have to pack it all up and return to a clean orderly activity.

A controlled activity.

A zero fun activity.

We’re not even sure what the big deal is, because without our efforts, the bathroom floor, walls, and ceiling would never get wiped down to the extent that they currently do.

So there’s rule number 1. Water guns are for outside. Ugh.

2. Don’t be gross and/or weird.

She makes us wear pants. To breakfast, to dinner, to lunch; inside and outside of the house… for all of the things ever.

We’re also expected to remember, after a billion reminders, to not drop potty words into every second sentence. And we’re definitely not supposed to break into hysterical laughter when somebody else does it first.

She also really doesn’t like us eating our own boogers, biting our own toenails, or sharing a toilet with our brothers. Don’t be gross, don’t be weird… it seems super important to her, so we try to hold back until she’s busy with the laundry or the dishes or her other chores in the next room.

3. Safety first. Yeah yeah… I pulled the 12 inch bread knife out the knife block and swung it around like a ninja sword while yelling “hiya” ONE TIME only. Ever since then, she gets super excited about anything sharp being left lying around.

She mostly just yells phrases like, “What if the toddlers find this?!” and “Stop carving the table!”

All of a sudden we can’t find a single knife, nail clipper, razor, or pair of scissors anywhere. That means shaving, carving, sword fighting, and arts and crafts projects are completely on hold. Double ugh.

4. Screen time limitations. She claims that copious amounts of video games makes your brain rot out of your head, but we don’t buy it.

They only make us frantically jump a little bit.

They only make our eyes bug out of our head and dart back and forth…. a little bit.

Screens teach us teamwork and persistence, those are good adult characteristics we hear about all of the time. And we just really believe that being given triple the allotted time would teach us those things EVEN faster.

5. Stop asking ‘Can I eat?” all of the time. This rule is just awful. You see, whenever we see or hear, or smell her cooking, baking, or chopping up something, our brains are instantly reminded that we ARE hungry.

SHE thinks we’re just getting all up in her grill in that moment, but we need to tell her that it’s simply a trigger notifying us about our hunger that we have briefly forgotten about since we were busy playing.

Mom’s rules are a bit of a drag, but since she does keep us (our bodies and our brains) safe, dry, and fed, I guess we could let it slide a little bit…

We could maybe keep the water guns in the closet, consider making our next battle weapon out of an old paper towel roll, and occasionally wait for the chicken to finish cooking before we holler a hearty, “Can I eat??? ” But… where’s the fun in that?