Getting Along Again

So, the boys have had a great weekend. It seemed to. Friday evening we took them both two the pawn shop to look at musical instruments. We got Brian an electric bass. Gary looked at guitars. The made friendly comments to each other about instruments. Saturday Roland took Gary into The City where he picked out an acoustic guitar. It is sold as a student guitar, but seems to be a good student guitar. Later in the day Gary asked Brian to show him how to play some cords. They talked instruments. Today they went to the gaming store and combined their money to buy a new controller for one of the gaming systems. They have spent most of the day playing. I don't normally like for them to spend so much time gaming, but they are getting along.

So I think talking to them separately was helpful. I think they "got" that they were escalating, each not liking the other for not liking them. The just both seem to be trying to give the other a second chance. I told Roland how wonderful it is. He sees this as "situation normal" and the tensions that were building up between them as deviations. I hope he is right. I do remember that they got along really well for a quite a while. I hope this new period of detente lasts after they go back to school tomorrow.

We've made a change in the chore schedule. They used to share the cleaning of the kitchen and almost every evening there were be complaints about whether the other had really done their fair share. For some reason they always protested that they didn't want to move to switching off nights, but this time I insisted and based upon a couple of nights it appears to be going well. When they cook they seem to make the biggest messes, not cleaning anything as they go, not putting away any ingredients. So on those nights I will do the kitchen, although I may recruit help from Andrew or Roland if it is really bad.

The kitchen was pretty bad tonight, but Gary made Chicken Marsala, and it was very good, so it was worth it.