Mommy mommy day

Today was the first Friday I was home with the kids.
We actually had a pretty good day overall...but it felt like a bit of a rollercoaster.
It started out ok. The boys and I had planned to make cookies. So we looked at the recipe and realized that we only had tub margarine and needed to go to the store. Maybe is was because I chose a regular grocery store rather than a mega mart or because we only had three items on the list, but the boys were really well behaved. The store didn't have any carts with seating for more than one child, but the boys stayed right with me, and I didn't have to get on to them about wondering or getting into anything.
They were also really good about helping with making the cookie dough. I did have to call my mom because I realized that I couldn't find a tablespoon measure (don't know if it was somewhere else in the kitchen or just not unpacked) and I needed to confirm how many teaspoons were in a tablespoon (woohoo! I was right.). The boys were also really good about helping make some brownies. They followed directions and were actually helpful.
They did reasonably well with lunch (as did Jo). Then...nap time was where we fell apart.
Normal Doug is the one who has trouble falling asleep and I know that naps (even with my babysitter) have been a little shaky lately like the boys might be getting close to not needing them anymore.
Well, I thought Doug seemed tired...he wanted to be held and was putting his head down on my shoulder. Andy even climbed right in bed. However I could hear lots of talking and noise.
I don't even think it was 15 minutes later that I heard enough to go look back in their room and they had pulled all the books off their shelf (which is fortunately just one shelf at the moment since I still have not found the brackets for the other shelves) and all of the extra bed linens and their sleeping bags out from the bottom of their closet. I picked it all up and got them back in bed and we tried again.
Less than 15 minutes later I hear noise again (though they did start out quieter this time) and sure enough they had done the same thing a second time. So this time I took all of that stuff out with me and put them back in bed. I did promise them that if they would stay in bed for 15 minutes and if I found them awake when I peeked in that they could get out. I gave them the offer of one toy to hold or a book to read.
Well, I am almost wishing that I had left the books and sheets in the room. I heard noise (I don't even think it was ten minutes) and looked in and they had pulled all of their clothing out of their dresser drawers and also almost all of their shirts off of the hangers in the closet (breaking 4 plastic hangers in the process...fortunately we have a ton of these). I resist the urge to just throw everything back in the drawers and actually do make them help me get all of the clothes in the dresser and even in the right drawers (and actually even taking time to put long sleeve shirts on one side and short sleeve on the other). Then I let them out of their room with no TV and no cookies (we had made the dough but it had to refrigerate...and the brownies hadn't been cut into at that point).
It was killing them that they couldn't watch TV or have cookies. Finally I give Andy the option of laying on his bed for quiet time for 20 minutes and he actually tells me he wants to go sleep. So Andy did end up taking a nap. Doug on the other hand, stubborn guy that he is, decides to stay up. He actually did pretty well but almost fell asleep during dinner.
Then the day ends with giving the kids a bath. I bathed all three in the tub in the bathroom between their rooms. It starts out like the other times I have bathed them all together...Jo thrilled to be included with her brothers and Andy and Doug just wanting to dump water on each other and on Jo. Then when I go to turn the water off the hot water won't turn off all the way. We're not just talking a small drip...we're talking a steady small stream. Jim couldn't even get it off with pliers so he had to turn off the hot water at the hot water heater, and then we couldn't find a breaker that seemed to turn off the hot water heater. So tomorrow we have a plumber coming...