eighteen-year-old mother of four: lessons learned

I would like to share the wisdom I gained from being the unwitting eighteen-year-old mother of four small children for the past 3 days. Here are some of the life lessons I learned:

• If you are trying to get a three year old boy to put on his pants, and are also exhausted beyond all comprehension, I think a good way to kill two birds with one stone is to lie down on the floor and refuse to get up until he puts on his pants. Every time he attempts to 'wake' you, simply say, "Are your pants on yet?". Make no other response. If this occurs more than fifteen times, stop 'waking up' if you know the pants aren't on. He may conclude that "you dead" and call in the reinforcements (siblings), but the point is that you get to lie on the ground with your eyes closed for more than ten minutes at a time, and even feel like you're accomplishing something. Of course, when he and his sisters start taking off your clothes, that's a good time to give up and let him run around nude, because at that point its either him or you.
• If you want a small child to do something that he/she does not want to do (i.e. shower, sleep, stop biting you, stop throwing rocks at his/her siblings, etc), you can coerce them into obedience without using violence or even anger. The key is to be really, really annoying. Trap them in a corner and loudly shout one word that states what you would like them to do (pants, pants, pants) over and over again. You will probably even annoy the siblings, whom you can then enlist in being really, really annoying until the child succumbs to your evil plot. Or showers. Either way, really, the point is that it works.
• To be continued...