Two recent stories for you:
Now that both kids share a bed, they go through bedtime together. Hayley and I trade off who is in charge, and that person reads two books in bed after they're ready; each boy gets to pick one. For some reason, Son One deeply deeply cares about whose book gets read first, so I came up with the idea that to incentivize him to move quickly, the rule would be whoever was in bed first got to pick which book was read first.
This kind of worked. Son One could be cajoled to move more quickly, but he wasn't really going through the routine quickly. Indeed, he started do this thing where he would, like, jog in place as he performed certain tasks because he was doing them "fast"... but if you are bouncing your whole body around while you wash your hands, it actually slows you down! So most nights "Son Two" was still ready before him.
One night he had a brilliant idea, though. Son Two was already in his pajamas and ready to brush teeth, but Son One of course hadn't even started getting dressed. So Son One ran to the bathroom and shut the door and locked it. Now Son Two wouldn't be able to brush his teeth and he would lose his head start over Son One!
The problem here is that we were all in the kids' bedroom... and the bedroom locks from the outside! This is how it was when we bought the house, and we have kept it that way (even though we replaced all the doorknobs) because we want to be able to lock the kids in the room for time outs and for enforcing sleep training.
It's one of those locks you can open from the other side with a small flathead screwdriver, or that small tool thingy that comes with the doorknob. We used to have one of those on the doorframe inside the room, but at some point it got put on the doorframe above the bathroom door instead. (I think because I used to get Son One out when he locked himself in.) So we were searching through the room for something we might use, while in the meantime Son One was getting crazier and crazier, delighting in what he had done.
Finally, we had to admit we had no way of unlocking the door. So, we would have to go out through the window. I wasn't really sure how to remove the screen, and I ended up breaking its frame in the process. (Maybe it can't be removed from the inside?) I boosted Hayley out the window, she went around the house to the garage door and came in that way and let us all out.
At the time we were pretty angry, but a few hours later and I had to admit it was pretty clever.
It's also a good example of Goodhart's Law: once a measure becomes a target, people begin to manipulate the measure in such a way that it is no longer a good measure.
We've really been in for it with kid sickness these past few weeks. Son Two had a brief fever of some kind. Then Son One got sick, and was out of school from a Friday to a Tuesday. He was back on Wednesday... and then Friday, Son Two got a fever and was out of school Friday to Wednesday. He went back on Thursday, and I allowed myself to breath a sigh of relief. Both kids fevers went pretty high at various point, and Son Two even went to the pediatric urgent care.
I had student conferences on Friday, and as I lead them, I felt that my eye was a bit itchy. When finally I got a break at lunchtime, I looked in the mirror and realized they were totally read; as the afternoon went on, they got increasingly gunky. Clearly, I had pinkeye. But the kids hadn't had pinkeye, just fevers. How had I got it? (I've had pinkeye twice since becoming a parent, both times picking it up from a kid, and both times I treated it just by using their leftover eyedrops.)
So, apparently, if your child had a bacterial infection and sleeps in your bed, they can get bacteria on your pillowcase, and then your face rubs on it all night. Gross! Obviously we should have washed the pillowcases and sheets, but this had never even occurred to me! It's the worst pinkeye I've had, my eyes were so gunky I couldn't focus them on my computer screen when grading, and I rapidly developed a headache.
After a day of antibiotic eyedrops, it was mostly back to normal, and I think the remaining irritation might be down to the eyedrops themselves, to be honest. I threw all the sheets in the house in the wash as soon as I got home.
I talked to a friend about it, also a parent, and she shared with me the fun fact that if you have two kids, there's a 50% chance you have a viral infection at any given time. This isn't to say you have symptoms, but you have a virus.
So! Parenting! Good stuff.
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