Play Dough, Play Dough, GO AWAY!

Ok, so I am am not the brightest person on earth. Yesterday when we ran to Walmart to pick up the All You mags, I let the boys get a 4-pk of Playdough. I left it in the car when we got home because I just was not ready to deal with it. Well, yesterday afternoon when we went to pick Evie up from school Mathis saw it and carried it inside. I told him that we would save it for tomorrow. So last night when I was taking a shower and Evie and Skye were doing homework Mathis and Alden stopped watching cartoon and went and hid in the back of their closet. Opened the 4pk. of Play Dough and created a new color blob. Later when we were getting ready to leave the house, Mathis came to show me his handy work. I was so upset I grabbed up his beautiful creation and threw it in a ziploc bag. This afternoon I used that same playdough to bribe Mathis into picking up his mess. I know that I shouldn't have but if I would have asked him to just do it, I would still be sitting here at 7:00 pm waiting for the mess to be picked up. Because playdough was on the line he picked up a huge mess in under 10 minutes. I mean he had toys all over the playroom, a chair fort in the kitchen, and other toys spread throughout the house. All of it gone so quickly amazed me. Now here is the very stupid thing that I did. I was in the process of sorting coupons on the kitchen table so I let Mathis play in the playroom. I gave him a huge cutting board and a couple of kitchen tools. A few minutes later I look in the playroom and he has playdough on the floor, his pants, and a trail going to the bathroom in my bedroom. So I felt like the damaged was done and he was playing so quietly (also a phenomenon) that I let him continue to play. When it was almost time to go get Evie he had been playing in the same spot for over 2 hours while Alden was taking a long nap. I told him we needed to clean up so we could go pick up Evie and after a few minutes of protest and the promise from me that he could play with the playdough when we got back he cleaned up his mess and I vacuumed the floor.
As soon as we got home from picking Evie up from school we moved the playdough to the now cleaned off kitchen table and all three kids gathered round like they were about to have the best time of their lives. They played for almost two hours before I sent Evie to do her homework and told Mathis he needed to clean up the playdough off the now semi-blue linolium. Well of course all miracles must come to an end because instead of doing as he was asked he took his playdough and went to the dining room table to make another mess. I chased him out of there before it to became blue and now one and a half hours later the mess has finally been picked up. I knew that this would not last forever and I should relish the good behavior and semi-quietness while it lasted, but secretly in the back of my mind I was hoping it would never go away. It seemed that in a period of thirty minutes all of the good things about today crumbled around my feet and the bad shone threw. Well I have taken a deep breath, vented to whoever is reading this blog and got it all out. I am hoping to be a nicer person for my efforts. I think I will fix myself an hot cup of chai tea and go settle in for the night on the couch with Daniel until the next up roar occurs.