This is what punishment looks like at my house. Well, not usually, but it did today in a round about way. Y'all are just going to have to follow me on this one . . .
You see, earlier this afternoon, my two oldest ones got into a knock down, drag out fight - literally. It started with bickering, escalated to yelling. That was followed by hitting and pushing. It ended with me sending both girls to their rooms forever for a while. I also took away their technology privileges including TV, Wii, & computer until Monday. (Yes, now I realize that is 3 whole days away. It was a moment of temporary insanity that I will surely regret many times during the next 72 hours.)
Then, later at dinner, they started singing the Star Spangled Banner. I honestly have no idea why. Rachel commented that the song didn't make any sense. "What does early light have to do with our country anyway?" My husband sarcastically replied, "It's a shame you can't go look it up on the computer since you lost those privileges, huh? I guess you could use the Encyclopedia books like mom and I used to use."
"You mean those brown books on the top shelf in the den? There's that kind of stuff in those?"
All three of them ended up as seen above - on the couch reading the Encyclopedia! DW and I just had to laugh. Here's some of the scuttlebutt we overheard:
"Who is this guy?" (Emily referring to a picture of Ronald Reagan)
"I want the G book. You take the T book."
"Look at these silly birds!"
"I looked up the Star Spangled Banner. Now, I'm reading about Italy."
"Can I take this book to bed and look at it for my bedtime reading?" (Megan - and she did)
Who would have thought?!?! Remember my technology post from earlier this week? This is one of those moments that really makes me doubt "progress." Normally, we might have told Rachel to "google it," but because of the punishment situation, that wasn't an option and they got so much joy out of looking through those books. I highly doubt that "googling it" would have provided the giggles and excitement they got from those old brown books that were collecting dust on a shelf.