Kitties in the attic

We pick and choose our battles. As parents, we know that we can never win every battle with our kids. We also don't want to take the time to fight with them all day. So, we choose what we want to fight with them about. There is one battle with my fluffiest children, that I fight on a daily basis - attic access. Our house is a bungalow style, so our ceilings on our second floor are sloped. We have fabulous, walk-in, storage at the front and back of our house. One side houses all my Christmas goodies and all my old baby equipment. The other side, as referred to by my husband, is my office. It stores all the clothes my kids have ever worn since they were born. For Jake, that's almost 8 years worth of clothes. I save these for our precious Emmy's unborn child or the possibility of adding one more to our family. I am in that "office" often. Between exchanging clothes as the seasons change for a family of five, finding shoes to fit their ever growing feet and my busy business on ebay - I spend a lot of time opening and closing that door to the attic.

Well, my furriest kids enjoy playing hide and seek in there. I don't like them in their for safety purposes and the plain fact that they nap on the clothes and get LOTS of fur on them. This is a battle I choose to fight with them. They like to be in there, I don't want them in there. I open the door, sit on the floor and work on getting my ebay packages out - they stand in the doorway, just waiting for me to turn my head so they can run in. Sometimes I turn my head just to psych them out. They run in thinking they are being sneaky and I grab whatever part of them I can get my hands on - ears, tails, paws, whatever. I would say that I win this battle only 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time - I choose to let them win - to teach them a lesson. I finish what I am doing, turn the lights out (there are no windows so it is pitch black dark), close the door and walk away. Most times I forget they are in there until the middle of the night when they scratch at the door and let out cries of surrender. I open the door, flip on the light - yea, I get my jollies out of watching them squint as their eyes get used to the light - and give out motherly pieces of advice like, "Did you learn your lesson?", "Are you going to do THAT again?", "I bet you'll stay out of there for a while!". The next day comes, I walk in the closet to grab something,turn around and you guessed it, there they are, awaiting the battle to begin again! This picture just sums up their attitude about this battle - BRING IT ON!