When Spud and Squirt play together, the noise they make could easily wake up the dead. They’d squeal, they’d scream, they’d have loud giggly laughs and they’d chatter at the top of their voices as they try to talk over each other with every single decibel of noise they could project. They’ll push, they’ll pull and they play rough as they both squeal in their loudest high-pitched voices.

They talk waaaaay too much too, non-stop.

If you can imagine the level of noise kids can make, especially if they do that at the back of the car while driving, you’d understand the distraction and potential mayhem such noise can cause.

As a parent, you’d want to exercise self-control and not scream at your little terrors, because, after all, they are having fun! Besides, screaming your heads off at them after repeating yourself a hundred times to get them to tone it by a few notches would work for only 0.38 seconds before they are at it again.

So what’s a helpless parent, wanting a little bit of peace and quiet suppose to do, right!

This is where the 5 minutes no-talking game comes handy – after I was almost brought down to my knees from exhaustion when trying to deal with them and the terrible noises in my ears. Make it 10 if you wish so. Bloody hell! Make it an hour if the kids can last that long! This is how it works:

• The moment they start behaving like they have escaped from the asylum, you tell them in a gentle and playful tone that you are going to play a game with them
• Tell them that there would be no talking for 5 minutes
•  The first one to utter even a word, lose
• Start at 1-2-3-Go.

Simple, enough right? The first time I suggested we played the game, we were in the car and it lasted for 15 minutes! That was 10 minutes more than the 5 minutes I thought I had in mind. I even forgot we were playing the game, until my daughter, in a whisper, said  “Mama, is 5 minutes up yet?!”

Oh boy! I had to laugh. I hadn’t bother to keep track of time, mainly because the silence was such a bliss.  Not that I intended too, anyway. Shhh…don’t tell anyone!

So I told Spud we had 3 more minutes for the heck of it, and that stretched for another 5 minutes before Squirt remarked rather nonchalantly that he needed to drink some water. Damn! I was loving the silence. If only you could see the sniggering smiles on my face!

But that was that. Squirt “lost” and Spud was too happy that she won. In fact, she suggested that game several times over. See! Silence is golden I told them and, it was fun to play. Best “time-out” ever and one game I would willingly obliged, anytime, anywhere ! 😀

Works with kids who understand the meaning of being quiet; at least for a while before they catch on.

Today, I wanted to chill. I had no intention to blog and I had wanted to just zone out on the couch after the kids go to bed. I have been completely spent…exhausted, drained and overwhelmed from the week in the office. But today…today…this  morning, at 6.45 a.m., I lost my head. Totally.lost.it.It’s not always like that, I assure you.

As per our usual mornings, Squirt would come into our room and snuggle up with me. He usually does this slightly before 6.30 a.m; sometimes he manages to go back to sleep (most times not)as I continue snoozing while I have him in my arms. And on weekends, after about half an hour mucking about next to me (and whining that he “wants to watch”), he usually gets my phone and I’ll let him watch a couple of cartoons on YouTube. Just so that we could get a little bit more snooze time before we go about our day.

If it’s too early, I’ll let him wait as I don’t want him to be on my phone for more than an hour. And today, after telling him a firm ” No Watching” at 6.30 a.m and that he had to wait for at least half an hour, I took my phone from him and fell back to sleep. I needed my sleep so bad.

Little did I know that he managed to pry the phone away from my hands and in no time, he woke me up again with his incessant whining of wanting to watch. Silver Bullet was still asleep and being half-asleep myself, I thought I’ll just do a quick check on the time on my phone as it felt that more than half an hour had passed since he came into our bed. I’m also the grumpiest grump in the morning and I hate it when my much needed extra half an hour of snooze-time is being interrupted. Letting them watch YouTube, next to us while we doze off a bit more is VERY convenient.

By 7 a.m., I transformed into this crazy lunatic, screaming the house down.  It was the first time I have ever gotten so darn pissed at Squirt because I was so darn mad! If I was a real dragon, I would have spouted fire right out of my mouth and burnt the house down. I was THAT angry.

Because, when I looked at my phone, I could not see the time or any of my familiar home screen. Instead, I was greeted by a blue screen that took me to a set-up screen. That little Squirt, had somehow, in that span of whatever minutes, managed to unlock my phone and did a complete RESET. Factory Reset to be exact! That means every damn thing on my phone is being COMPLETELY WIPED OUT.

How he did it, I have no clue! I don’t even know how. As we discovered,  it is not the easiest thing to do and  in order to reset, one has to perform the following:

1. Turn off the device.
2. Press and hold the following three buttons at the same time: Volume Up key, Home key, Power key.
3. When the name of phone appears on the screen, release the Power key but continue to press and hold the Volume Up key and the Home key.
4. When the Android System Recovery screen appears, release the Volume Up and Home keys.
5. Press the Volume down key to highlight ‘wipe data / factory reset.’
6. Press Power button to select.
7. Press the Volume down key to highlight ‘delete all user data.’
8. Press Power button to select and start the master reset. When the master reset is complete, ‘Reboot system now’ is highlighted.

Pretty complicated, no? Somehow, his little hands aided by his not-so-little brains managed to figure it out. Or maybe just sheer luck as he obviously didn’t know what he was pressing.

If I was groggily sleepy, I was wide awake then. My anger made sure of that. My wrath was unleashed and it wasn’t pretty. Loads of crying (Squirt) ensued and very sternly, I send him to his room because at that point in time, I really did not want to look at him.

Luckily for me, my husband is a geek. He helped out with the new setting up of the device as my patience went thin and he managed to restore a few things. Most stuff, unfortunately were all gone. Poof!

I have been pretty stern with the kids today. They understood that Mama means business, and me being stern with my tone, with a “no-nonsense from the both of you or else fill in the blanks”, had seemed to have an impact. Their behavior was a little tame, and if they had considered pushing it, they considered twice when I GLARED at them. It seems that I have mastered that look. I also dished out a new rule for them: They are NOT allowed in our room until we ask for them. Let’s see how that pans out tomorrow.

Maybe I should just unleash my wrath more so they would behave. (OK, not too often or they would think I’m a freaking lunatic and it would get old all too soon!). Oh why oh why! Do we even have to get to this! Why can’t they just get it that screaming is so not cool, yet it feels that they are always asking for it. It’s not like I’m enjoying this. Dammit kids!

It has been a stressful morning. Now that my phone is all reset, which, according to Silver Bullet, has its merit of being faster and stable (nooo..really! don’t even try!), I guess I need to put myself on reset too. Maybe I’ll be stable faster too.

Perhaps, when I look back, I’ll be able to laugh about this…but for now, what happened today was not at all funny. *growwwwl* OK. Gotta breathe. Over and out.