Tuesday, October 25, 2016

The Day We Overruled Our Children

Believe me when I say I am not a pushover parent. I don't give in (at least when it matters), I'm strict with bed times on school nights, eating what's on your plate or you don't eat at all, brushing teeth, whining doesn't get you anything, etc. Of course there's the times I do give in: just one cookie before bed, PLEASE!!??! Fine, it's the end of the night anyways. I actually firmly believe in letting my kids choose things for themselves and hearing their opinions. Sometimes it works out, sometimes I have to pull the Mom Card that says mom trumps all. But let's face it, we're two adults against three energy filled kids. The kids win out on A LOT (if you have less than three kids, you will not understand this feeling to the fullest. If you have three or more children, likely you'll be fist bumping me through your screen).

A lot of the time we just don't have the energy to put up a fight. I try to remember the saying "pick your battles" when it comes to things. If it's not life or death or involves anything with hygiene, the minis typically win the argument. Except when it came to picking out Halloween costumes this year.

Every year we've let them be whatever they've wanted to be. They have loads of fun scouring costume aisles and stores deciding on that "perfect" costume. Hubs and I have envisioned family theme costumes every year, but we've never pushed for it because we didn't want to deal with the wrath of the children. Plus, Halloween only comes once a year, they should get to pick out what they want. Well this year they already had the costumes that they wanted to wear in mind and the oldest mini even had a costume already (that lucky duck talked us into two costumes last year and didn't even wear the second one!). So we headed to Target one night to grab the desired costumes quickly. Of course, much like everything else, it didn't go as smoothly as I imagined it would.

As soon as we hit the Halloween section, the minis suddenly changed their minds about what they wanted to be. The oldest threw a fit because he suddenly decided Ant Man wasn't good enough, but being a pirate for Halloween was his true calling. The middle mini forgot about the costume he had been talking about for months and tried to talk me into one of the most expensive costumes Target carries. The youngest mini wanted to wear an Ariel wig with an Ana AND Rapunzel costume together.

Hubs and I couldn't take it. A set of costumes caught our eyes (at nearly the exact same time) and together, in public (which we avoid doing because, well, judgers) we shouted at the whiny, fussy, and tearful minis "no! You're not getting any of those costumes, even the ones you picked out before." As you can imagine there were tears. Lots of them. A Target employee even came to check on us to make sure everything was okay. 

Mom and Dad can be such assholes sometimes, buying everyone new costumes and an assortment of other things. God forbid mom and dad get their way once in a blue moon!

"No one's dying," I assured her as the minis struggled to breathe through their horrifying tears. Hubs and I grabbed our theme costumes for everyone in the family and told the kids THIS is what we're wearing. They weren't thrilled. They informed us they were skipping trick or treat this year. We said fine, ignored them, and bought the damn costumes WE WANTED. Yes, we got something we wanted. We overruled them on something very trivial and it was totally worth it!

We debuted our costumes this past weekend. We went as breakfast (in jammies and all. We didn't push for them to wear our matching pajamas).


It's so funny how the kids that fought us on these costumes suddenly LOVE them. The oldest mini even went to a birthday party with friends and wore the donut costume because "it's my favorite Halloween costume I've had." I don't foresee us picking battles like this one often, but this is one time I'm glad we did. Sometimes, mom and dad just need a stupid, trivial win just to remind everyone that we are in fact in charge.