Confessions of a Reformed Mommy

I turned into one of those moms that I secretly talked smack about while my boys were still cooing and crawling about in pools of their own drool. I became one of those moms that buckled in the name of convenience. Convenience over common sense.

Yes, for months, I had a television in the boys' room.

This was not a decision without resistance. My sister has had a tv in her daughters' room (complete with cable!) for years. We let the boys lay in our bed and watch tv on those nights when we have company and it's just easier to let them drift off to a nice movie instead of dealing with the constant requests for more milk and midnight snacks. My husband convinced me it would be temporary, we'd just put the tv in there for one particular weekend when we had a lot of company and older kids playing video games in our room while the adults watched some play off sports.

What the heck has happened to the former Santa Cruz student who believed tv was evil and went years without cable, instead favoring friends and radio music and board games?

Anyways, that weekend with the tv in the room stretched into months. I vowed to move the monstrosity into the playroom once we had the masses of toys organized. Ha! I vowed until I was out of breath, yet took no action.

Until this afternoon.

Since the tv in the room, the bedtimes have stretched later. The tv viewing times have stretched longer and the book reading has dwindled. I became someone I never thought I would be. The tv truly became my babysitter.

Last night when I got home from my tennis lesson (yes honestly, don't laugh about the tennis...that's another post in itself) past 9 pm the boys ran rampant demanding another two hour Scooby Doo movie. As if!

I finally got them corraled into bed and payed dearly this morning when I had to get them up for preschool. I literally dragged Bobby out of bed at 8:20. Mind you, school started at 8:30. A morning of orders barked, faces wiped and limbs shoved into clothing ensued. And the whole drive to school involved a breathless, pissy lecture about the evils of television before bedtime.

When I picked them up from school hours later, I had them help me clear out space in the playroom for the tv. We dusted and hooked up the various parts and said goodbye to nighty-night tv.

Thanks to my succumbing to the easy way out of bedtime, which turned out not to be so easy after all, I now have to retrain myself, my husband and my kids how to go to bed the right way.

And yes, Shane is still up instead of in bed with his stack of books, riding his scooter around the house like a banshee.

It's going to be a long week...