Day 1106: Overreaction

I'm pretty good at those.  And last night's post was a bit of one.

But, that doesn't lessen all the gratitude I feel for the advice and support you've offered me.  Thank you so so so much!  It was exactly what we need and I'm excited to try it out.

Darling A is excited too.  Because this is her very first ponytail.  Yes, it's a little silly looking.  But, still fun.

Today went better than yesterday.  At least, I felt more hope in my mothering skills.  Or, at least the potential for them to improve.

Plus, it was an early release day from school, so we had some extra time.  Usually, I kind of dread these days.  It's too much time for everyone home and the kids are all fighting by dinnertime.  Not so today.  I had a whole list of things for them to accomplish--including running on the treadmill which they've been wanting to do for quite a while.  Little M put in about a mile and Sweet P ran for 20 minutes!  I couldn't believe it!

So, the afternoon was very structured and not too frantic and it went really well.  Monday night I made a list of chores for them to do any time one misbehaved.  Then I read the advice from Becky about having them serve each other for offenses against one another.  So, I combined the two ideas and was super excited to implement.

Wouldn't you believe it?  They were all really well behaved!

Except for a monumental tantrum thrown by Baby B at dinner, but I'm still trying to assess what level of consequence he is ready for developmentally.

Then a really great violin lesson with the kids, accompanied by some wonderful insight on my parenting freak-out from their instructor/my friend in the form of a great book.

I'm still in a bit of a grumpy funk in general tonight.  I'm pretty sure I know what the problem is.  A while ago my therapist mentioned that some people come to see him expecting him to break out a magic wand and "fix" them.  He was telling me this as a part of congratulating me on being so proactive about getting out of my depression problem.

Yesterday I scheduled an appointment with him for next week and as I've contemplated what exactly I want to discuss with him, I'm realizing that that is pretty much where I'm at right now.  Too tired and lazy to do all of the things I need to.  I just want him to wave a magic wand and get me back to where I was before the influenza and its dreadful night sweats struck.

Trouble is, I know he doesn't have a magic wand.  And even if he did, that wouldn't really solve anything, since this is a long-term issue with long-term needs for progression.  So, I just need to cowboy up and get on with getting over my grumpy funk.  All by myself.

Well, not all by myself.  But, I need to do the things I know I should in order to be close enough to the Lord that I can access His ready and waiting help.

Why does this feel so hard?