You ever have one of those nights where both your 8 year old and 6 year old are sobbing over the injustice in the world, you and your spouse are yelling just to be heard over the din and the dog won’t stop barking because she really, really wants that steak you’re trying to eat?

Yup, me neither.

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The kids have both discovered Minecraft. Scorch has been into it for a while, but a few weeks back the Bean got bit by the bug. They are pretty limited in how they can play (we don’t let them play with others, etc) and for some reason they both insist on playing on the iPad even though we also have it on the computer. So every.freaking.day for the past two weeks has been a fight over who gets the iPad when and for how long.

The Bean has started to wake up earlier to play and the kids try to beat each other to calling dibs on the iPad before even we leave school to head home for the afternoon. It usually worked itself out and we’re so busy that the kids only got little bits of time to play here or there throughout the day. But with night coming earlier and the days getting chiller, the time spent playing was starting to grow.

The Hubs and I finally did what we should have done weeks ago and put strict limits in place. To say neither kid was happy with us would have been like saying the Pope is only a little religious. The iPad and computer are now off limits in the morning before school and they only have a set amount of time each day after school to play. Once that time is up, no matter how they use it, it’s up. No going back. If you don’t use all your time in the afternoons, you don’t get extra time the next day.

Evidently those rules = the world ending. Who knew?

The Bean was ticked because she used her 30 minutes up right after we got home from school and had to *gasp* fill her time playing or reading until bed. This lead to an epic fit that included her 1) telling me I was the worst mom ever, 2) I wasn’t her friend any more and 3) that she was running away.  Oddly enough she didn’t take me up on her offer to help her pack her bag and lunch for when she left.

Scorch was a sobbing mess because he spent the entire time after school until bedtime playing baseball outside. So he thought when he finally came in and started eating dinner (at 7:30 mind you, which is when we normally start bedtime) that he’d get his 30 minutes. He was heartbroken when he found out that he didn’t get to play and then just plain furious when he realized that his 30 minutes from today doesn’t get tacked onto his time tomorrow.

So that is why at 7:40 tonight both my children were sitting at the kitchen table sobbing, the Hubs and I were yelling (at the kids, at each other and at the dog) and dog was barking for our steak that Scorch was finally eating. Good times in the Heat household tonight, good times.

*Fighting Zombies = my kids, not the game characters