How can I wear out the children?

Today Mike had to leave for school at 7am and I knew he wouldn't be back home until 10pm so I decided to pack the day with activities to keep us busy. First things first, I had to let Jillian Michaels back into my living room. It's getting a bit too chilly to take the kids on our usual morning walks so I'm resorting to a work out video to get my exercise. I hate it. Emma sat in there watching me the whole time going "mama! you doing exercise?" So normally the things I would say out loud to Jillian about her workout torture had to be kept silent in my brain. That was a work out in itself.

Later I took the kids to a new bouncy house place that I had a coupon for. Jake hooked up with several boys his age there and they just took off being super heroes the entire time. I think it is just in a boys DNA to fight bad guys and ward off evil. Poor Emma Mae had to play by herself a lot because the boys just didn't want her around. To make it up to her I took them to Chick Fil A for lunch afterwards. She loved it. Jake whined the entire time that he wanted to go home because he was so tired and said he just really doesn't like chicken.

As it turns out, when I got them home they both felt feverish. I loaded them up with Ibuprofin and told them to both take a nap. Amazingly, Jake perked up after laying down for ten minutes. It took Emma ten minutes of screaming in her room that she was "NOT TIRED MOMMY!" before she passed out for the next hour and a half. I will never understand why you would fight someone who is telling you it is okay to go lay down and go to sleep in the middle of the day. I would bring that person gifts and tell them that I will love them forever.

After naptime, we went to WalMart because I've been promising Jake that we would replace his old Spiderman costume before Halloween. He lost the mask and the costume itself is riddled with holes. Spiderman has been a busy guy. Well, our WalMart didn't have the cheaper $10 model in his size so I ended up spending more money on a muscular Spidey that turned out to be two sizes too big for Jake. I immediately had buyers remorse but I cannot pry that thing out of Little Man's hands. He keeps telling me that it is falling down on him, but when I tell him we should take it back and look for something in a smaller size he gets very misty eyed and says that he will just grow into it tomorrow.

Also, he brought me the old costume tonight and said "mama, can we just give this old one to those people who need things?" Clearly, my talks of giving to those less fortunate than us are sinking in. Sure, it would be nice if he wanted to give the less fortunate nice, good things instead of stained up things with more holes than swiss cheese. I have to remind myself we're making baby steps here. And I remind myself that he is saving up his allowance money to buy his sister a new doll. And maybe some chicken nuggets because goodness knows he doesn't need any of those for himself.