Oops... I lost it.

Well, I spent all day with the kids...  7:00 am to 8:00 pm.  Pretty much all day, all alone, just the three of us.  Well, we weren't exactly alone...  we went to Sea World for four hours.  I think that actually added to the stress.

That and I have put the kids to bed by myself the last three nights in a row.

I think those two things in part contributed to the fact that I screamed at the kids tonight.

Bedtime is the most frustrating part of the day!  Trying to get the kids to clean up is terrible!  They are "too tired" and whine about it.  And seconds later are engaged in playing some game together.  Too tired, my butt! 

I started a new program last night where whatever is not put away goes into time out.  Veronica was refusing to put away two toys and her flip flops.  So I put them in time out.  She wanted to wear her flip flops to Sea World today but couldn't because they were in time out.

Short memory because that wasn't an incentive at all tonight to put away toys.  In fact, Jackson handed me a toy car and said, "I don't want to put this away so you can put it in time out."  WTF!?

Anyway, after trying positive methods I'd had it.  I screamed at them that they were "pissing me off" (I know, yikes!), and that I'm tired of asking them, to get their toys put away NOW, etc.  You get the picture.  It was probably only three or four sentences.  But I felt terrible afterwards.

I apologized and explained.  They picked up toys.  And now it's over - my bi-annual or maybe quarterly? blow up.

Gotta get my "Positive Discipline A to Z" book out to figure out this cleaning up stuff.  It's SO frustrating!

(Also, I do realize that many, many people experience more stressors than those described above - spending all day with the kids, putting them to bed for three nights in a row...  Stay at home moms with more than two kids, single parents, etc...  there are many more stressful situations I could be in.)