Tenniel and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day

We have bad days too and today was one! Coming off a great 4 day weekend filled with lots of dad time they simply crashed. Crabby, whiny, mean and unkind to one another. I am drained after a long day of heart and character work. I feel like I spent the whole day just correcting them and teaching. From one crisis and unkindness to the next, at times challenging to keep up with them.

We have a saying that "We don't speak whinese in our house." Unfortunately we can still be subjected to hearing it. My temper gets shorter and shorter the more the whining, fussing and complaining continues. I yell and get short and am just as crabby - then we get into an unhealthy cycle.

We tried lots of strategies today. They even got to do extra chores like weeding, washing windows and walls. Still it continued, naps did not work either, nor did outside time. You did not want to be a fly on our wall today that is for sure. It seems nothing works, so off to the library and pond, two places that calm everyones spirit. Something about new books, caterpillars, worms and ice cream cheers everyone up.

As I type this on my Blackberry I recognize we all need a day of adjustment that sometimes makes us crabby. Guess today was that for us. Here is to tomorrow being a better day. In an attempt to be optimistic (not a strength of mine) I will say the silver lining is you get to read about the bad too. I'll try not to think too much about the irony of this post following the previous post and remind myself that some days are just like this, even in Australia!

Tenniel

Small Victories

There are some things I have really been trying to work on lately and today had some positive results for a change.

1. Floor Play with Sirah - I used to love being on the floor playing blocks, games, puzzles, etc with little ones. Over the years I have found my desire and patience to do so has decreased. I still play with Sirah but differently. I have been trying to really get down on the floor with her more. Today we had a tea party on the living room floor and she made me lovely treats and tea, pop, and fruit punch. It really was a positive memory to be treasured and a reminder of why I need to be down on the floor with her before she no longer wants to play like that.

2. Arts and Crafts time - I don't like it - I never have and I am not yet convinced I ever will but I have felt convicted to let them have more arts and crafts time. They have painted twice in a week and got to make free crafts with glue and such this week - that is a HUGE improvement over the time they usually get and it was not that bad. Okay washing all the tempera paint supplies and cups was but the rest was not too bad. I especially enjoy watercolors - they could do those every day now that they have real watercolor paper that absorbs rather than runs.

3. The Mud Battle - I hate mud and kids and dogs love it! Not good for me since I am seriously outnumbered with 3 kids and 2 dogs. The winter thaw is thus not my favorite time of year. I am especially unhappy with my crazy mud loving dogs at this time of year. So I alternate between going on strike and being hyper about it. The amount of dirt I swept up off my entry way floor tonight is truthfully embarrasing - but at least I finally did it. Looking at it I would think it was over a month of dirt but sadly just a few days. I finish cleaning the floor only to let my dogs and their muddy paw prints back into the house. It just feels like a futile battle. The victory was the decision to sweep and clean the floor even knowing it was going to look terrible in a few moments again. The second victory was ordering our new Roomba which does help keep me saner during this time of year. Our old one broke and I was waiting it out but we miss Roomba and a new one is on its way, hooray!

Small victories I know - but hey you have to be proud of something :)

Laundry Day

Currently I have 6 baskets of clean laundry to fold, 2 more in the washer and dryer and about 3 more to do after that and these are not little loads of laundry. So little more than laundry is getting done today.

Since it seems my real life friends have really been enjoying my more down to earth posts as of late I was inspired to share another one with you, a fact I don't often share here on the blog or in real life - I am terrible at laundry.

I want to pre-empt anyone here by saying my mother taught me right, even my MIL has shared all the good tips for me when I asked her. This is truly an area of my life where I know there is a better way to do things but I still can't seem to master it. Here are 10 reasons I am lousy at laundry.

1. I don't keep up with it so it grows into big piles on my laundry floor

2. I don't sort - honestly. It all gets washed together with VERY few exceptions

3. I forget to check pockets. So crayons, chapstick, gum, you name it it's been through my washer and sometimes dryer.

4. I forget about laundry and can leave it in the washer and dryer overnight and in the winter sometimes even longer.

5. I don't iron. Period. It is not because my mom did not teach me to. She irons everything and very well, she did teach me how and make me iron when I lived with her. She even still encourages me when we are together to iron though in some things I think she knows I am a lost cause. I even had lessons again as an adult by my FIL an expert ironer and I just can't bring myself to do it - poor Serona. At least he knew it when he married me - I don't iron and that is not changing.

6. Since I don't iron I dry everything. The only exception was when we did cloth diapers I actually line dried those to preserve them longer but not clothes - it is too much for me to remember what needs to be hung up. So I have been known on occasion to shrink family members clothes. If you buy us anything 100% cotton please make sure it is two sizes too big then it should fit :)

7. I prefer to fold all at once rather than when the comes out of the dryer, even though I know it is better to fold as they come out. Since I forget about my clothes in the dryer they get wrinkled. Then I dump them in a basket to fold upstairs. Only then the basket sits because I want to fold all at once and I always seem to have clothes in the washer. Then they get more and more wrinkled and eventually we reach the point where we are digging through baskets for clean clothes.

8. I hate matching socks and therefore don't do it until I absolutely have to leading my family to go digging through big bucket of unmatched socks for a pair. So if you see my kids in unmatched socks - it is completely my fault and they probably did try their best to find something that matched.

9. I fold clothes on my bed - I know I should not every wise source tells you not to but I do - at least if I fold them there I really need to make it through otherwise I can't sleep or I have piles of clean clothes on my bedroom floor which is really not good - so I guess it is a motivator for me.

10. Last dirty little laundry secret - I don't use stain stick or stain remover or anything like that. Once it is truly stained in our home all hope is lost. I have tried in the past and simply can't do it well so I have stopped trying. So yep you will probably seem some stains on my kids favorite shirts that a better laundry mom could have gotten out.

So the long and short of it - we buy easy to maintain clothes and much of Serona's nicer work clothes now go to the dry cleaners as I have ruined one too many nice shirts! I spend at least one whole afternoon folding and folding and did I say folding. Today is that day for me so don't be looking for any creative President's Day Lesson plans. Best I can do is point you to Enchanted Learning and the White House Kids page.