Early Morning Shouting Match

My boys are strange. They prefer to be woken up early on a school morning in order to get a little extra playing in. If, for some reason, they get up late and we don't have time for that play session, but they have to head right out the door after breakfast, they look at me stricken and ask why they can't play first. As if I have taken something away and am punishing them!

So school has started again, and with it has come the reinstatement of early morning play date for my boys. It usually goes pretty smoothly, but this morning I had to put a stop to it. As I was upstairs getting dressed, the noise level downstairs hit an all-time high. What it sounded like was all three boys shouting at the same time.

That is exactly what it was, in fact. Jack had gotten into something he shouldn't have, and when Ben tried to get it away from him, he began yelling (as usual.) In order to be heard over Jack's noise, Ben shouted a little louder, "no no!" Mitchell must have felt left out at this point because by the time I got down there, all three boys were sitting in a circle, a few feet apart, all yelling at one another. Each one was trying to out-do the other in the noise department.

Needless to say, the rest of their precious before school play time was spent with each of them in separate rooms. Stay with me, sanity!