Thursday, December 5, 2013

One week!

I have been completely and totally "Yell Free" for an entire week!!  This is a major accomplishment for me and I am super proud of myself, especially after the morning I had.

I have noticed one of my triggers is stress.  Who doesn't get triggered to yell by stress, right?  It's not any stress, though, but stress that comes from the things that are out of my control.  Something goes wrong and I tend to snap at the first little voice to ask me a simple question.  I promised myself last week that never again would I yell at my children when something else was eating at me.  I had the perfect test this morning and I'm pleased to say that I passed with flying colors!

M received a magic set last night for the 8th night of Hanukkah.  This morning, I found her wide awake at 6:30 (yay!) practicing her magic tricks. . . still in her pajamas.  I gave her about 5 minutes to show me a trick she had learned, applauded her and reminded her to get dressed.  The trick she showed me was cutting a rope.  After she was dressed, she ran into B's room to show her the trick and instead, the rope cutting thing broke.  I immediately felt my blood pressure rising.  I wasn't mad at M at all.  I was really upset with the inferior company who made this lousy toy.  I immediately found their website and called them. . . at 6:45 in the morning.  I'm not sure what I was thinking, but obviously they weren't there.  I sent them an email and proceeded to try to get the girls ready.  B told me she knew she could fix it if I just let her.  I felt a yell getting ready to pop out and pushed it back in as quick as I could.  I took a deep breath and told her that I didn't want her playing with it, because I really didn't think it was fixable.  She seemed to accept that.  The girls sat down to eat and I proceeded to pack lunches.

We were actually running ahead of schedule this morning and I was super excited about that.  As I was trying to herd the girls out, I noticed that B was still standing by the dining room table where I had put the rope cutter thing.  I told her to come on and she said, "I fixed it!"  I am not going to say what she did to "fix" it, just in case you have any budding magicians who want to show you this trick, but suffice to say, she most definitely did not fix it.  She actually broke it even more.  Now, last week or the week before, I would have started ROARING at her for touching it when I explicitly said not too, but you know what?  She was only trying to help in her 10 year old way and I am so very proud of myself that I remembered that.  I simply told her that in trying to help, it actually was even more broken.  Oh. . . my poor girl looked so sad.  I thanked her for trying to help and reminded her that there is always a reason why I say no and this time the reason was because she didn't know how the trick worked, thus, she didn't know how to fix it.  We still managed to get out the door on time, with nary a tear in sight!

I'm not sure why I'm feeling so stressed today, but I need to find a way to shake it.  My witching hour is between 3 and 5 (I get 2 hours to feel like a witch!).  I'm not sure why, but every day at about 3, I start feeling really run down and burnt out.  I know I am more liable to yell during this particular 2 hour period and I'm a bit concerned that given the fact I am already feeling blah means it's going to be even harder to remember my children are children and not go berserk when B leaves her homework out, M asks for help and L keeps asking for snacks.

The good news is The Doctor and I have an evening out tonight (a boring business dinner, but at least I'll get a glass of wine and some adult time), so I'm sure that'll be the perfect thing to reenergize me for tomorrow.

No Yelling Count: 7 Days!!

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