Carnage Adovada: It’s Not Just for Bedtime Anymore

It’s August!  I could take this moment to reflect back on what a great summer this has been or maybe launch into a good worry about my youngest starting kindergarten, but I’ve got a little issue on my hands here.  My kids, ages 5 and 6, have been together since school let out in May and are now trying to, um, well, kill each other! It turns out that when our kids “marinate” in togetherness all summer, we end up in August with a big ol’ batch of what my husband so fondly calls “carnage adovada.”  Here’s a free sample of this spicy dish:
Child #1: “MAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHM!”
Me (sternly, to Child #2) “WHY did you smack your brother’s arm with Barbie like that?”
Child #2 (beet-red and fuming): “Be-CAUSE  I missed his neck!”
Me (!): “No, no, honey, I mean WHY are you hitting him?”
Child #2 (sternly, to me): “He was  LOOKING at me!”
Child #1 (to Child #2, with pure, unadulterated glee): “Ha! YOU got in TROUBLE!”
Child #2 (lunging at #1): “STOP LOOKING AT ME!”
Me (calm inner musings after I count to 10 and locate mental Happy Place)  Hmmmph!  I thought my kids had been car-tripped, zooed, libraried, playdated, museumed, free lunched-in-the-park, art projected and generally entertained within an inch of their very interesting summertime lives. TODAY they are bored.  Bored out of their gourds.  Go figure!
Me (out loud, with feeling, directly to unsuspecting Grandma): “MAAAAHHHHHHHHHHM!”

Jill Saberhagen Schorr has two kids and is very happy with her full-time mom gig.  In the past she has worked as speech-language pathologist.  She was raised in Albuquerque around an alarming number of professional writers.  Just for fun, the Schorrs are raising more chickens than you can sensibly shake a stick at.  Thoughts and opinions expressed by Jill do not necessarily represent those of  FYF, i.e., the rest of us here who are not exposed to chicken-poo fumes on a daily basis.