Santa, CTJMs, and timeouts- oh my!

We went to see Santa today at my mom's church. Uncle Malcolm was playing the part of Santa and that took some creative explaining to the kids. They know that all the Santas at the malls and places aren't real Santas but are his helpers. The trick was to explain how Malcolm is suddenly in Santa's inner circle. I did a very clumsy job at it, I'm sure, but they seemed to buy it. I will post some pictures as soon as I get them. They had a pancake breakfast, all kinds of crafts, pictures with Santa, candy...it was impressive! The girls even got to make a few things and wrap them for gifts.

But...there was some naughtiness. Ian and I had to have a CTJM (come to Jesus meeting) right there in the bathroom of Bales Baptist Church. There was a disagreement between him and myself over how long we should spend playing a basketball game. I wouldn't have cared but there was a line of teenagers waiting to play and Alexandria was downstairs making crafts unattended. He was carrying on, doing that thing he does where he makes his whole body go limp, so I essentially had to drag him to the CTJM. Thank heavens Grandma Goody was there to tend to the girls so I could deal with this.

Sadly, this was not the last incident. We were going to pick up Karl and I had Elizabeth and the two older girls already in the car. Ian decided he needed inside the house which was locked to get his biddy-ba(blanky.) If it had not been about -10 degrees outside I might have indulged him. But I felt that it was too cold and we were too far in the process of car-loading to go back inside. Especially since it takes all of ten minutes to drive to get Karl. I told him he could have it when we got back home. Well this was not an acceptable response on my part and he showed his displeasure by refusing to move off the front porch. I had to carry his rigid little body to the car and figure out how to get him to bend so I could get him in his seat.

Thiry seconds later- we had a full on meltdown because his shoe came untied and I am not able to tie shoes and drive simultaneously. On a sidenote: did you know that you can have time-outs in the car? Yes you can. We pulled the whole van over and sat there until he could compose himself. It was pretty effective.