Roller coaster

Today was a roller coaster of behavior.

Thursday is library day & the past two times we've been, The Boys have behaved admirably well. Today was a hellscape in comparison.

The low point was Little Bro dodging me in the book stacks, chortling with glee at getting away from me. I now know what it's like to blush from shame under a librarian's disapproving eye. Oy.

Shortly after we got home, we had a visit from a new therapist for the Boys.

Yeah. That went well. Like they ate jumping beans before he got there.
They wouldn't sit still, wouldn't answer his questions, were generally awful.
He was all, "are they on any meds?"
Ha! Does it look like they are?!

Good luck to him, hope he can get past their wildness.

After that double loop of bad behavior, I fixed dinner, did their chores without issue (emptying dishwasher & taking out trash), had a lovely dinner, homework went smoothly (tie for Homework Champion!). Yay!

Then came bath time, which started as soccer time in the front yard. We got finished with homework early, so I let them play outside for a bit. All jolly good fun, until they refused to come in.

And when I did chase them into the house, proceeded to shriek and run in circles. And shriek some more.

Then, despite my best intentions about not raising my voice today, I did. Boy did I. I hollered & grabbed blindly for elbows to haul a kid, any kid to the bathroom.

I have never so badly wanted to paddle a kid, as I did in those moments. But we're not allowed to (and honestly, it's a good thing- it would have been out of pure anger). So I yelled instead. It got them in the shower, but left me sagging in exhaustion & horror at my own anger.

~~~

As we were wrapping up shower time, a dear neighbor friend stopped by to say hi & meet the boys.
And of course they were LOVELY to her, giving parting hugs and the whole nine yards.

Once I got them into bed, read a story, got hugs kisses, gave drinks of water, etc, and then gave them my ultimatum.
No getting out of bed, or no special lunch for school in the morning.

10 minutes later, they were up.
I let Greg put them back to bed. I cracked open a new bottle of wine.
Thank goodness tomorrow is a new day.