A successful day...finally.

First of all, thank you for all of your sweet words about my pycho-mom post last night.  I don't know what my problem was that day, but at 8:00, I went on an hour-long walk with a girlfriend and sorted it all out in my head.  Sometimes, verbally vomiting all over another mom can make everything a little bit better, with glimmers of hope on the horizon.

So today was better.  I woke up groggy...again...but vowed to be intentional about my reactions throughout the day.  After Ryan helped me make eggs and toast for breakfast, we headed out to the health food store.

On the way, we had one incident where I had to remind the kids that my patience is thin this week and that they need to get along, but all was fine after that.  (This was triggered when I overheard, "Don't even think about it, Ryan..." with a response of "Oh, I'm thinking about it!"  My kids love to hate each other sometimes.)

Before unloading from the van, I remembered the "good mom" from Trader Joe's earlier this week.  I decided to take a page from her book and keep the little kids in my cart while Ryan pushed a separate cart with the food.  I explained to the kids what they should expect and everyone was on board.

Kaylin asked for a copy of the sale flyer and a pen and "helped" by circling the items she thought we should buy, Jason crumpled and threw held my grocery list for me, and Ryan was thrilled beyond words to help with the actual shopping.  He wrote out the little tags for the open-bin products as I bagged them, he thoughtfully decided where each item should be placed in the cart, he carefully chose apples and peaches without blemishes on them...he truly is such a mini-me sometimes.

The harmony in this grocery experience was just beautiful.  The kids still jabbered and asked a million questions, but I didn't have to remind my curious little people to keep their hands to themselves, which is always frustrating. This might be how I grocery shop this summer, now that Ryan's out of school for a few months.

We had a snack when we got home, then I sent the kids outside in the backyard to play while I put the groceries away.  They got along just fine; no fights, screaming or tantrums.  I didn't hear Kaylin whine, "Ryan-nuh" even once. (that's my newest pet peeve...Kaylin adding, "uh" to the end of words when she's annoyed: "Stoooo-puh" or "Noooo-wuh" - drives me nuts)

(unfinished, published 2/28/16)