I blame his mother.
Yes! I am right hear with you. Of course, in my case, it’s stepping on bananas in my socks and watching 64 Zoo Lane .
And I am soooooooo sick of reading Curious George. Once upon a time I loved Curious George. I had a Curious George key chain even though I am adult, and a Curious George coffee mug and for Christmas one year before we had kids, my husband gave me a giant stuffed Curious George.
And now? Well, now Curious George can kiss my ass.
If I have to read this set of stories one more time, I’m going to scream. Oh, who am I kidding? Tonight is DH’s turn, but I know I’ll be reading at least one of those stories at bedtime tomorrow (if not at one of the numerous “let’s sit on the potty and see if anything happens” breaks I give my daughter during the day). And the stories, while overall wonderful classics, are full of people smoking pipes and other details I just really don’t want my daughter catching on to (i.e., calling someone fat, or the line “Curious George was so ashamed he wished he was dead”—we skip those bits). But the real killer is the sheer repetition.
Oh, well. Last night I tried to beg off and get her to read other books, but when she persisted, I realized that, years from now, I will miss the times we cuddled up and read and I could play with her curly hair and touch her pillowy cheeks.
Because she’ll be rolling her eyes at me and telling me that I’m the worst mom in the world.
Electronics never really break, they just pass beyond our ability to repair using current technology.
Here. I am right here with you.
“What was that round, shiny thing? George was curious.”
I’ve noticed that men have a much lower threshold for kids crap laying about than, say, their own floatsom of life.
I can easily overlook the asploding toybox, but all the paper work that never.goes.away drives me utterly and completely batshit.
I also blame the grandparents.
Lorene, I think the only redeeming feature of the Curious George stories for me is their total disregard for PC. Drinking! Smoking! Blackmail! Drug abuse! (Okay, it was an accident, but still.) Dogs peeing on newsstands! Great stuff. (We have the same book, and, yeah, I was pretty sick of them for a while.)
Yeah, that page with the bottle of ether is a riot. It makes me think there was a lot more to Margaret and H.A. Rey than meets the eye.
BTW, guess what my girl is reading right now!! At least she is quietly “reading” it to herself and I don’t have to go through all bajillion pages of Curious George Learns the Alphabet (which, incidentally, contains forgery and minor swindling).
First off, put your foot down with the grandparents. Ask for books or clothes or baby-sitting coupons, tell them the kidlets have enough toys.
Now, this may be a bit tough with the younger ones, but with the five year old, can you start telling him “Only two toys at a time?” Meaning, if he wants to play with Toys 3 and 4, he has to put Toys 1 and 2 back.
Ask your wife if you can switch one night. I’ll bet she’s sick of making dinner.
Lastly, enjoy this time. I know it’s frustrating, but my kids are teenagers and quite frankly, I miss the time of Happy Meals toys and broken crayons and Hot Wheels. My kids want CDs and video games and gift certificates to Target and EB Games.
It goes by very fast.
That made me snort out loud!
I have yet to get sick of the classic kid books. I second the fun of the non-PC aspects of CG.
What I get sick of immediately are any books about Disney movies. Bleah. If you really want a good idea of how badly Disney mangled classic fairytales, reading the kids movie summary is a good way to enlighten you. Bereft of the scenery and songs, all that is left is the suck.
I sympathize with the Toy Pitting. If the tiniest one follows the biggest and pulls toys back out, you are not likely to make the biggest one delay bedtime to clean up. It gets better eventually. Once they can all talk and help put away it really does get better. My youngest is 3 1/2 and generally we can whip them into cleaning up. But 30% of the time we gownups still end up picking up.
Never mind grandparents, watch out for the uncles!
Seriously, it sounds as if you are in need of some ‘we / me’ time.
Just a thought, but have you thought of asking the grandparents to have the children one night - or evening - a week? You’ve got three sets, so do it on roughly a 3-weekly rota. On two of those weeks, go out together and do something; on the other, go out seperately.
Don’t know about the OP, but we get this advice repeatedly. For us, when our kids were toddler age like the OP’s kids, a parent’s night out disrupted the kids schedules enough that whatever relaxing we did on our night out was wasted the next day dealing with over tired cranky kids.
House Rule #1: If Mom or I pick it up, you lose it for a week.
It’s amazing how quickly they will learn to put their stuff away. Really amazing.
I second the “it’s a waste of time to finagle a night out” camp. 90% of the time, it wasn’t worth the time and effort–and the price paid the next day.
I don’t see it being a guy thing (the difficulty dealing with the Innundation)–I hated the toys. I am still thrilled when I can rid our house of some (youingest is now 7–all that preschool shit is GONE! Yay).
I like the send them to grandma’s for a noc idea. When mine were that little, I didn’t want to run around downtown or leave for the weekend–I longed for quiet time IN MY OWN HOME.
I third switching out chores with your wife. Everyone needs a break from their daily round-bet she does too.
And I DO hope you have made YOUR bedroom a NO TOYS sanctuary. I found that helped my mindset a great deal.
And please, rid yourself of many of those toys–shelters, the Salvation Army, local preschools–all will benefit and chances are, your kids won’t miss 'em. I found that the fewer toys that were out, the longer and more creatively the kids played with them. My kids got thru a week at their grandparents with no TV, a box of Legos, crayons and books (they are a bit older)…but it does show that it can be done.
Yeah, it works when the kids hit like 3 1/2 years old. But it just leads to confusion and crying for 2 year olds.
Hey, that’s a good idea! Thanks. 
Thanks again for all the responses! I’m really starting to feel better.
Curious George: I hate the stories, but my wife doesn’t. Watching the “little monkey” being plucked from his jungle home, and thrown into a sack, by the great white hunter was enough for me.
I was somewhat half joking regarding the grandparents, although it was bad there for a while. We have put our foot down and most have done a good job respecting that. My mom, however, still finds ways to bring toys into the house. Not all the time, anymore, but enough.
But then there is the birthdays and Christmas. They make up for it on those days. 
Well, we do have a “date night” about once every six months or so. And what do we do on “date night”? Think/worry about the kids! LOL!
My wife’s mom and my mom have helped us quite a bit in the last couple of years, particularly during the day when I’m at work. And the kids love them. We don’t feel comfortable asking for any more help than they already give.
On the weekends, we do some on-duty rotations; My wife gets some free time to do various things, I get some free time to get excercise, etc. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.
I usually don’t get home until after 6:30PM. Hence, my wife usually makes dinner. I sometimes make dinner on the weekends.
Yes! Our bedroom is a NO TOY ZONE!! 
Ok, one last toy rant:
Why the hell are most toys locked down like Fort Knox now?! You purchase a toy, any toy, and it takes like an hour extract it from the box! The box itself has multiple layers and once you reach the inner chamber, you have to remove ten-million twisty ties, which are threaded around the toy in multiple ways.
WTF?
This thread reminds me I have a confession to make: For a long time, my daughter didn’t know Barbies came with shoes. I would “help” get Barbie out of the box and slyly cause those tiny pointy things to vanish. I knew there’d be hell to pay if she ever went to dress the doll and couldn’t find the matching shoe, and I was damned if I’d ever look for something that size in the toy box.
I hear you on the Heremetically Sealed toy problem.
This is why I, Shirley Ujest , fully support going to a resale shop where they usually have all the peices of whatever you are looking for, but it isn’t at the high cost ( usually half or less) AND!!!111111!!! it isn’t locked up tighter than virgin.
Think of Xmas morning and how tired you are as a parent wanting to just lay down in the tsunami of toys and sleep the sleep of the dead for just.a.few.minutes.more ( or until January 2.) do you really want to rip apart that Polly Pocket/Lego/Hot Wheels/Barbie present so your precious child can play with it quietly ? You will need scissor, a sledgehammer and, the hardest of all, the ability to not swear like a drunken sailor.
Won’t someone think of the exhausted parents?
Another option is to completely de-package items prior to wrapping.
And I second thrift stores — with all the money I’ve saved, I was able to justify buying a couple of really nice expensive toys!