Lost Causes

We've had these kids for a while.  Feels like forever sometimes.  They're good kids.  I like 'em and they're cute.

So, we'll keep them.

But I am beginning to lose hope in certain areas.  I figure it is my job to help raise adults.  But, there are some things I don't think they will ever learn.  I honestly worry that in 20 years their respective wives will still be asking them to stop jumping off the furniture.  Because, goodness knows, I tell them pretty much every day of their lives and it never seems to stick.

I have heard that Albert Einstein said, "Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results."  Since I tell them the same things over and over again and get the same results, I  guess that the only way to avoid insanity it to stop expecting different results.  Not that I am going to stop trying.

Here are some of the lost causes of my parenting world:

• As I already mentioned, there is the jumping off of the furniture thing.  ::Sigh::  Let us all say a little prayer of gratitude that we don't live in an apartment with people living below us, because Jason and I get aggravated enough as it is without people living below us complaining to management.
• Flushing the toilet - I only have about a 70% success rate with them doing this unprompted.  But since they have been potty trained for combined total of nine years and never once has it been okay NOT to flush the toilet, this should be happening all the time.
• If I just told your brother not to do something, that does NOT MEAN THAT IS OKAY FOR YOU TO DO IT RIGHT NOW.
• The older boys have five tasks to complete every school day morning before they can play before the bus comes: get dressed, eat breakfast, clear table, brush teeth, and get backpack ready.  That's it.  And yet they give me completely blank looks after each task as if this is totally shocking information every. single. morning.
• Books go back on the bookshelf exactly how they were when you found them.  They do not belong stacked on top.  They do not belong in stacks in front of the bookshelf.  They do not belong shoved on top of other books.  They do not belong in house or on a mouse.  Or with a fox or in a box.  They do not go with green eggs and ham, they do not, do not Sam I am.