Aubrey's in Charge

Aubrey watched the three younger kids for me the other day for several hours. I told all of them that Aubrey is in charge and that they needed to do whatever she tells them and that I didn't want any phone calls from her that started with these words: "Connor's doing this..." or "Ronin's doing that...", etc, etc (you all know what I'm talking about.) As an added incentive, I also told them that if I didn't get a phone call that they would get an extra thirty minutes of video game time when I got home. Not only that but both Connor and Ronin had a list of jobs on the refrigerator to get done before any playtime. As for Aubrey, I told her that she ought to give them a few warnings before she called.

Well, off I went and after awhile I started to wonder how the kids were doing because I hadn't gotten any phone calls (which is most unusual.) I called home and Aubrey said everything was going well.

Ok....great. After several hours I came home and the boys were just bursting at the seams because they had been very good and I didn't get a phone call from Aubrey. Not only that but the house was spick and span clean. Wow! I was very impressed. Sure enough, I kept my word and let them have an extra 30 minutes.

However, I noticed this when I walked in the kitchen....

Can we say "close call?"

I thought this was a clever idea that Aubrey came up with - it made it very apparent to the boys how many warnings they would get before "the phone call" and where they were at throughout the course of the day. Maybe next time I'll tell her to take it down to 1 warning and see how well they do.