Let me preface this by saying I love my kids more than anything. They mean the world to me and I am so lucky to have them in my life.
But boy do they know which buttons to push. It's almost like they have the buttons held down with no release in sight. Specifically my middle two children.
I truly believe that everyone has their moments with their children, but not everyone has a Kody! He has the most tender heart and can produce the saddest quivering lip and puppy dog eyes when he's embarrassed or in trouble (by someone else). But when it comes to his parents, it's a whole other story. He usually yells back or hits the closest thing to him. Sometimes that closest thing happens to be human: 80% mom, 19.9% sibling, .01% dad (that last ones doesn't go over so good)! We've tried every thing under the sun to curb this. We've persuaded, made rules/consequences, bribed, promised, yelled, screamed, and even tried extreme patience, but there is something about this strong willed child that doesn't want to listen to his "stupid" parents. (His favorite word right now!) The best part is that he's teaching Ryker all his tricks. Lucky us!
I was reading a blog not to long ago where someone had given her a plaque that said "I can do hard thing". Ever since then, I try to remind myself the same thing.
On Monday night we sat down and made some new rules that have consequences that they all made/agreed upon. Time out, loss of wii/computer & no friends if it gets to that point. By Tuesday morning, Kody had lost every one of those! Lucas had to sit in time out and swore he'd be good for the rest of the day. Kody could have cared less. They are like night and day!
I guess he figured he was already in trouble, so why not just go all out! He and Ryker decided to build an awesome indoor waterslide in my upstairs living room! This made an already "at wits end" mother not so happy! You know when you get to that point that your teeth are clenched and your fists are tight?? Or maybe I'm the only one that gets that way... but I figured the only way to keep from doing something not nice was to send him to his room. But he didn't want to go... instead he ran down the stairs laughing! Now I'm fuming!! So I did what any mother would do. I pulled his ear in the direction of the stairs! HA... that sounds so dumb now, but at the time it was better than the alternative. I think the thing that made me more mad was not the actual mess; but that he didn't care. And because he thought it was funny, so did Ryker. Kody spent the next 45 minutes in his room and Ryker got to sit on a chair in the bathroom while I cleaned and got ready for the day. We soaked up several bath size towels full of water in both the living room and my bathroom. This is when I wish our bathroom didn't have carpet!
Just to give you a visual, they had taken the round folding table and tipped it on its side. Then they used plastic bags to make a slide. They filled the humidifier container with water and dumped it down the bags so they could then slide down. Pretty ingenious if weren't for the major mess they made.
The spent the remainder of the day in and out of trouble and both ended up taking a nap. Luckily by that night I was able to smile about the incident and laugh about my children's creativity. We had a good night and played baseball in the backyard while Jed was at mutual.
I can do hard things!
Life is good...
and then I woke up this morning...
my bathroom reeked of mildew and the living room didn't smell so hot either. And then the kids started the usual morning antics. I was mad again. So I decided to go take a break in my stinky bathroom to wax my eyebrows. While I was unscrewing the jar, it fell out of my hands and spilled all over the counter. And then I realized my bra (because I hadn't showered yet) was sitting on the counter and in the middle of my now spilled jar of wax. Not cool!! I only own 2 braziers as it is; one is covered in a large amount of wax and the other in the dirty clothes. Awesome... my morning is turning out great! And then I had a brilliant idea... I'd use one of my nursing bras and stuff them with the inserts I used to fill out my wedding dress! I knew I kept them for a reason! After lots of olive oil, the wax came off the counter, but the bra was a lost cause. I think I have an idea for my Mother's Day gift!
Jess came to rescue me by taking Kody and Ryker with her for the day. Thank you, thank you! I was able to use the carpet cleaner to clean/suck up any excess water. I borrowed some fans from the neighbors and they've been blowing on it ever since. One of the guys in our ward does restoration and came to look at it. He said we should be okay, but it'll take about 3 or so days with the fans on it to be complete dry. Hopefully the smell will disappear as the carpet pad dries. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't just a tiny bit disappointed that we didn't have rip up the carpet in the bathroom and replace it with tile.
So tonight I'm listening to the buzz of the fans, looking at my extremely neglected house and the pile of laundry that's beckoning... I think we'll watch an episode of Bones!
It'll all still be here in the morning... and tomorrow WILL be a better day! I'm going to make sure of it because I can do hard things!
