Friday, September 14, 2007

Just another day

It must be FRIDAY! Today, I found myself feeling easily irritated with my children. Please tell me I'm not the only one that goes through this! I'm always painfully aware of the time in my monthly cylce. I wish it weren't true, but I confess that I am a moody period person. That aside, my kids seemed to know exactly how to push my buttons this morning. Here's the story:

Tonight is picture night for the kids. I found some cute new outfits for each of the kids and a new pair of shoes for Andrew (I didn't really want his Spiderman shoes in the picture). This morning I decided to try the shoes on him. So we sat forcing stiff new shoes on his feet. He complained the whole time. All after he complained all morning that he wanted to put his new shoes on. As we sat on the steps and struggled, Alissa comes around the corner with her bowl of cheerios that are supposed to remain at the table. Lacking coordination, she proceeded to dump them all on the floor. When I raised my voice demanding that she pick them up, Andrew decided to chime in on the discipline.
This is a problem that I have with him frequently. When he hears me discipline one of the girls, I find him yelling along with me. It's very frustrating to say the least. Because my words get lost in his yelling. So, at that moment I sat and tried to strongly explain to him why he isn't allowed to do that. No more than 2 minutes later a similar scenario occurred. And I snapped.
As a mother, I am baffled by the things my kids hear and understand and the things they appear to hear but clearly DON'T understand. We had just had this discussion about not yelling at the girls and he did it again. This time he experienced more discipline than that which I was implementing toward Alissa. I'm pretty sure he got it this time. And to demonstrate the stark differences in my children, when the moment of discipline was coming to an end, my beautiful Anna looked up pointing to a toy she had in her hand and said, "Look, it's a flower!" I thought it to be a very symbolic comment at the end of a difficult teaching moment.
When this much drama occurs in my home before the hour of 9am, I am ready for a break. And so here I am. It isn't often that I actually send my kids into the family room for the specific purpose of watching TV, but this was a moment that I needed to be alone. Thankfully Sesame Street was on. Somehow I make myself feel better about them watching shows like that. A subject for another post!

For the last 20minutes, I have only had a couple of interuptions from my kids trying to be space walkers, walking on the moon. But after listening to the worship set on my ipod and writing for a bit, I am confident that I am better for the day.