Hey everyone,
For those who are wondering, my finger is doing fine. :-) It just feels a little bruised, but other than that I'm amazed at how little it hurts!
Yesterday was President's Day so the boys were home from school. We did errands including a Sam's Club run, where I treated the boys to pizza. After we got through the line and were finding a place to sit, a lady came up to me (she had been behind us in line) and told me I have the most well-behaved boys she had ever seen at Sam's club! I told her thank you and she said it was a real pleasure to see little boys acting like gentlemen. Yay! Poopy songs notwithstanding, someone thinks my boys are gentlemen! I have to give them credit, they are very well behaved when we are out and about (which is probably why I like to take them out so much-- they are better out than at home!).
Today was cleaning day (since there was no school yesterday), and when we were at Rena's house, she showed me this clipping from a catalog and told me that her son Carter (9 years old) was looking through the catalog and cut out the picture, showed it to her and said, "Hey mom, doesn't this look just like Gabby?" I scanned the picture so you can see (above) and I totally laughed out loud. Yeah, I look like that-- IN MY DREAMS!! But still it was flattering. Completely and totally wrong, but flattering!
Ok, enough brags about myself and my boys. Here's some real honesty. Mosey was being really whiny this afternoon. He was looking at a valentines picture of Rose that the Bradfords sent us (thanks guys!), and kept trying to bend it. I took it away from him several times and told him "No bending the picture!" but he persisted. And yes, he did know exactly what I was saying to him. So finally I took it away from him and put it up, and he threw the biggest tantrum! Tears and everything. I figured he was tired, maybe, so I took him upstairs to try and get him to take a nap. Dozens of songs and stories later, he was no closer to sleep. To make matters worse, Brigham and Joseph came to play in the next room (adjoined by those sliding doors). And then, predictably, they started to fight. As usual, Joseph was doing little things to annoy Brigham and Brigham was completely overreacting and yelling (really shouting!) at me every minute or so, "Hey Mom, Joseph is messing up my train tracks!" "Hey mom, Joseph is putting the tent over my cars!" "Hey mom, Joseph is messing up the blanket on my bed." Try to hear that in your mind's ear in the *most* shrill, whiny, 4-year-old voice that you can imagine. And he cannot just stop there. He must continue to shout this at the top of his lungs until I respond by saying, "Joseph, stop messing up the train tracks!" "Joseph, move that tent to the hallway!" "Joseph, put the blanket back on the bed!" You get the picture. And trying to get a 2 year old down for a nap in the middle of all of this back-and-forth shouting is just really not happening. I was getting more and more frustrated and finally Brigham is yelling for the 100th time about a "stain" on his bed and he needs me to was his sheets and blankets RIGHT NOW, and I just lost it. So there I am literally SCREAMING from Mosey's room, "BE QUIET!!! I DON'T CARE WHAT IS GOING ON, JUST BE QUIET NOW!! I WILL HELP YOU AFTER MOSEY'S ASLEEP BUT UNTIL THEN I CAN'T HEAR YOU. STOP WHINING AND JUST BE QUIET!!!!" Yeah, great Gabrielle. Great way to teach your children to be quiet and well-behaved, by screaming like a banshee. Anyway, they finally were quiet, and Mosey finally did fall asleep, and just as I was extricating myself from him to leave the room, Brigham came up to the door and was crying. In between sobs he said, "Mom, I can't stop crying. I'm trying to be quiet but I can't stop crying."
Ok, bad mommy moment. Really, really bad mommy moment. So I pick him up, take him in my room, lay next to him and hold him and comfort and reassure him as best I can until he is calm. Ugh. So I've been feeling really guilty for the rest of the day. Oh well, tomorrow is another day and another chance to do better, right? And I'm not really emotionally scarring my children for life, right??
Ok, that's it for tonight. Hope you are all having more even-tempered days than I am!