Little Visitors

I knew that when working from home my biggest challenge was going to be time management. Trying to get work in with everything else that goes on during a normal day was expected. What was not expected was the challenge of dealing with our little visitors.

Right next door to our apartment lives three little girls. Twins and an older sister that are all close to Emily's age. They are nice little girls and are all thrilled that Emily is home more often. The older girl goes to school all day but the twins are home all day. This means that almost everyday they are either here at our apartment or are asking Emily to come over to their house to play.

Having two extra children in the apartment makes our already tiny space even smaller. I also spend more time "babysitting" (aka referring play time, making sure they let Palmer play too, get snacks or drinks, putting on a movie, etc). When Emily goes to their house it is a whole different set of issues to deal with. Emily throws a fit EVERYTIME I tell her it's time to come home. Not just a little pout (which is how it started) but now tears and melt downs. I've tried to "ground" her from playing with her friends for throwing fits. So say today she throws a huge fit then she is not allowed to play the rest of the day or the next day. After her huge fit the next day when she is reminded she pretty much forgets (although the girls coming over three times to see if Emily can play doesn't help) until her grounding period is over and then we are right back to fits when it's time to leave again.

Besides the fits the other big issue is Palmer. The twins are really big on not wanting to play with Palmer. When they are playing here or outside my rule is that they play with Palmer too or they don't play with Emily. It's not fair to keep him out of his room or to purposely not include him when playing. This past Saturday Emily and Palmer were playing at their house and Emily came back with Palmer and had planned to go back by herself to play. It was close to 8pm and although there were big melt downs Bret and I told her she needed to just stay since it was close to bed time. She was upset that she had left a couple toys at their house so I went to pick them up for her. The twins were upset because their mom had told Emily to take Palmer home and come back by herself and now she couldn't come back. This really bothered me. I would never tell the older sister to take the twins home and come back and play or tell twin A to take twin B home and come back. I know Palmer is younger and a boy but I still feel it is unfair to purposely not include him. He loves the girls and doesn't understand why he is left out.

I am stressed about this whole situation and don't really know how to handle it. It is going to be a really long summer with all of the kids home if I can't get this under control. I know one thing for sure I'm not going to keep things going the way they are right now cause it will send me over the edge. Do you think I should go and talk to their mom? She always asks to take Emily places with the girls and doesn't include Palmer which I'm OK with but I still think the kids need to be nicer to him when they are here. UGH!! I don't have time to deal with this right now.