July 22nd & 23rd, 2020: Monotony, Shmonotony

I didn't write yesterday, mainly because I didn't really have much to say. It was a low key day spent at home. By the time we could have gone to the pool, the weather was looking a little dicey so we stayed put. The kids managed to still play out back in their little pool for a bit though, and we did play some games together in lieu of getting out of the house. I taught the kids Uno, which I got Rowan for his birthday in June, and they enjoyed it so much we played like 5 rounds. To be honest though, we may have not played as many rounds if Maeve had won sooner than that because she's kind of a sore loser and just has to win before moving onto a new game... 🙄🤦

Other than that, all I have to share from yesterday is one funny thing that Rowan said. We were talking about baby Nolan and Rowan chimed in "When I was a baby, Nolan was Rowan" 😂🤔 - which what he really meant was, he used to be a baby just like Nolan. 3 year old mixups are kind of the best. 😂

Today had its good moments and bad moments, which is really how it normally goes ha. #momlife I've found that I go through cycles of handling my kids' bad behavior pretty well and then somehow I get out of whack and for the next little while I seem to get stuck in lash out mode when they misbehave. Right now I'm in lash out mode and just this week I've already yelled at Maeve 3 times and really just took what was a bad situation and made it worse. 🙈 I don't know what it is, but it seems like more often than not, my kids do not listen well nor do they take my discipline seriously. There is nothing that gets under my skin more than me telling Maeve that if she doesn't listen and stop what she's doing that I've already asked her to stop doing once, that she will lose her nightly treat for her to say to me "no I won't" - excuse me, what?! Who do you think is calling the shots around here chica? You, the 5 year old?!? Think again little girl! Don't worry, she lost her candy for that comment. I just couldn't handle it today and the yelling ensued. But I HATE it when I yell because I immediately feel so guilty and start crying. And every time it's the same story - I recenter myself and then talk to her again and apologize for not handling myself well, hash out her bad behavior and make sure she knows the boundaries and understands what the problem was and she apologizes too. I feel like these heart to hearts go well except for the fact that I always cry in front of her through some of it. Today I started to worry that there could come a point where you're crying too often in front of your kid(s) and they might think you're a mess... And maybe I was already there! 😥 I thought of Jody Moore's Better than Happy podcast and I thought to myself that as a life coach she seems to know so much about human behavior and managing your emotions, etc. and I knew she'd be able to tell me what was appropriate. I couldn't help myself because of the worry, so I straight up sent her a message on Instagram to see if she'd humor me and give me her opinion. Turns out, it is good for your kids to see your human-ness and there is nothing wrong with crying in front of them when something has happened that makes you want to cry. She even said there's no such thing as crying too often. I bet a lot of people might disagree with that, but maybe it's because the norm for a lot of people is to want to push away negative feelings and not feel them because negative feelings are viewed in a bad way. But apparently we need to all stop doing that!! Negative feelings are a part of a life and we need to embrace them, feel them, process them, and move on to better feelings. Anyway, hearing that from her eased my worries and I am praying I can be better moving forward at keeping my cool. They're just kids after all, feeling big emotions themselves that they're not sure what to do with. How can I expect them to figure out how to manage their ugly feelings and keep their cool if I can't do it in front of them?! Parenting is such a big freaking job. I need all the help I can get from the Big Man upstairs. 🙏🙏🙏

That was a long tangent, but as far as how we spent our time today, it was a lot of the same that we always do - taking out every last toy they own from our downstairs toy basket to set up their "home" behind our couch and taking turns pretending to be dogs - ya know, the usual. 😂😂 The only that changes from day to day is what/who they're pretending to be. They also played outside some, we hit up the pool before it stormed and had it all to ourselves, and before long it was time for dinner and our other nightly routines. One of those being reading lessons with Maeve and I swear, that girl can read well, but sometimes (like tonight) she messes up the words and it is clear she is not even looking at what the letters are AT ALL and will not even try to figure it out the right way. She just keeps throwing out different wrong words, even when I tell her to sound it out, and it drives me crazy. 😫 She also tries to skip certain tasks sometimes just cause she doesn't like what she's supposed to do and that also drives me nuts! If we keep doing 2 lessons a day though, we will be done in 12 days and she will officially be reading on a second grade level. 🙌 We'll see if we pull it off!

The only picture I've got is one I snapped yesterday of Nolan trying to get in on the action with the kids. He's a busy boy crawling everywhere these days and the poor 3rd child has it kinda rough, cause pretty much in their eyes he's almost always just trying to ruin their fun with his grabby hands and entering their territory when they don't want him to. But how do you tell a baby to stop being a baby? 🤷‍♀️ I think they're just going to have to learn a little more patience.

Also Rowan is in fact naked 80% of the time. He likes being naked. I'm over it. 

Aaaand I think that's all I've got.

Peace and blessings. ✌️