Not sure where to go with this one

For one of the few times in his life, Matthew was very generous in sharing. Unfortunately what he shared was his nasty respiratory bug with Nicholas who then shared it with Jonathan and me. Mark seems like he may have decided to join in the lovefest as well. Not what we need as we are trying to get our house ready to put on the market.

Speaking of that, Mark moved us from our 10x10 locker into our new 10x25 locker on Saturday morning. My response...go finish cleaning out one of the boys' bookshelves and add a bunch more stuff to be taken out. As of today, the boys' room only needs a little more work before it will be considered done until the actual remodel of it takes place (paint and flooring). At that time, we'll get the C&M into one dresser and lose one of the Lego storage bins.

And that leads us to my bookshelf. It's pathetic now. Last year it was overflowing with books. I literally could not fit them all on my shelves. Now, not only do the ones remaining all fit but they are in single rows, nice and neat. *sniff sniff* It's sad for me knowing that I have hundreds of books I want to read in storage right now.

And that leads into a totally new tangent of how sad Christopher's behavior is making me right now. We have several sick people in the house, we are all busting our butts (even Nicholas in his own way is trying to help) to get our house emptied so we can do the repairs and get it ready to sell. All of us that is except for Chris. He has not been doing any of his chores at all even after hours of nagging and if he does anything it's back to being half-assed. He has already lost his gPhone and wireless card out of his computer because of this as well as most of his books. This made an impression for maybe a week before he headed right back into it. We are now trying to figure out what we can do next to get it through his head that this is unacceptable. Unfortunately, whatever we do will likely end up punishing all of us in some way. Possibly taking away all his books except those necessary for school and most of his brothers as well since he'll just read those if his aren't available. Almost definitely having to stand over him while he does his chores which means that is time that Mark or I don't have to work on other stuff around the house. Likely, I'll be giving him extra chores to do to compensate for the time I don't have to do them and they'll be ones he can do in whatever room I'm working in so I can keep an eye on him since I can't trust him on his own. He's much too fond of distracting himself with absolutely anything.

I HATE that he can't just cooperate and do his part as a member of the family. I HATE that we are having to crack down on him. I HATE that his behavior then rubs off onto the other boys. Amazing how when he did do things well and we praised him, that didn't rub off but when he's not behaving, that does. *sigh* I know this is a phase. I know that as a teenager, it's normal. That doesn't matter tho. I need help and cooperation from him right now especially because that means WE get a bigger house and HE'LL get a room with just Matthew so they can have more space to be "teenagery" in. More space to put things away so we can keep a decent house. But we have to work together and right now he's just being too lazy and too self-centered to care about anything but putting food in his stomach and sitting on his butt.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!