25 Days of CHRISTmas - December 4, 2008

Well, last night I went to bed, as I described in last night's post, with my heart feeling very full.... Apparently the gravitational effects of laying flat on my back for six hours (that's right, I only got 6 hours of sleep) emptied that cardiovascular organ of mine right out!

OK, not quite, but it really was a tough morning. Today was library day for the littler kids at school and a lost library book by a child who'd been told every day this week to find it sort of put me in that lecturing mother mode, and that's just never a fun place to be. And I tend to be one of those moms who plays that role with just a little too much gusto. I had to ban him from library use for the day (because the lesson about keeping it where I told him, and looking when I'd asked him needed to be driven home... oops, I guess I just outed Ethan.) He was dropped at school not feeling very happy.

Pick up in the afternoon didn't kick off very well either. Victoria was putting on a full court press to go into the bathroom and put her tights back on. These were the very same tights she had her teacher call me about just before lunch asking permission to take them off. I wasn't on board with a stop in the restroom to change when as soon as we get home they have to take their uniforms off anyway, but she was, let's just say, relentless... I asked her, "Victoria, does whining at me get you your way or does it get you in trouble?" She knew the right answer, didn't care, so my blood pressure was on a slow steady rise the whole dramatic walk out to the car. (A filling of the heart that isn't nearly so positive.) And the sentencing of a 20 minute time out came swiftly.

As I was putting the kids in the car Ethan informed me he did not eat his whole lunch, to which Victoria proudly responded that she ate all of hers. For some reason in that moment it occurred to me that I had ordered hot lunch for her today and never should have packed her one in the first place. Brilliantly (not) I made the realization out loud. Which set off a whole new dramatic turn about the elusive bean and cheese burrito that had been lost to my daughter forever.

"On the fourth day of CHRISTmas my true Love gave to me... the gift of a reprieve."

We all had a complaint, many somewhat valid. Everyone was unhappy with someone, as for me, I was unhappy with everyone, including myself. (Wasting $4 kind of burns my butt.) It was a pivotal moment at which I announced, "That's it! We ALL messed up today, we all blew it! Let's just let it go and start over." Ethan said, "Yeah mom, should we just forget it like we don't remember it happened?" I told him, "Yes, let's just let it go."

My daughter is no slacker, she said, "That means I don't have to have my time out, right?" No, she didn't. Grace in action! And a call home to Jake solved the problem of the missing library book. (It was on the desk in the boys room. When Ethan heard that he said, "that was really dumb, huh?" Yeah, huh.) Victoria came home and put on some old stained tights with runs up the front of them, and she was happy with that. I'm still irked by the $4, but I choose to just LET IT GO!!!

Merry CHRISTmas!