Love/Hate relationship

With my toddler and the TV.

I should have known better with all those "I'll never....my child will always..." statements I made before I had children. Every one of them has come back to bite my butt.

Except the co-sleeping....well, not really. OK, all of them.

I know the recommendations. We've blown right past them.

I've just had to choose to be OK with what we are doing right now. He gets to watch a LOT in the morning. However, I can only do so much entertaining at 5am, a common wake up time. Kevin and I got up with Patrick today at 6:27am. "Wow! He slept in!" We were genuinely excited.

We have also snuck in a little bit in the afternoon, for quite time (that will hopefully transition to nap time). He won't nap in his room anymore, but he'll often crash out on the couch during a program. Or at the least, it's some down time so I can eat lunch/take care of Fiona/try to clean the kitchen/get on Facebook.

We are starting to cut back in the evening. It's interfering with dinner time and he usually wants to play games with Daddy anyways. (Oh, the computer, a whole other issue). Plus, we are often both home and can divide and conquer the kiddos.

But today had it's own rules. By 4pm we were all three of us cranky. Kevin was at work until 8:30pm. We'd stopped by a friend's house and the visit had ended badly with a crisis of unknown origin (How is it that when I looked at the kids they were smiling and playing, thirty seconds later it was meltdown?) The rain had kicked in. Patrick had his own agenda at Metropolitan Market involving multiple samples of their cheese. Fiona was protesting against the chair of torture. I was done with the whole mess.

Home we went. Pajamas on. Mac n Cheese on the stove. Charlie and Lola going strong. Sometimes you just have to call it a day.

But Patrick is learning about saying sorry. He accidentally yelled in my ear and I snapped at him. He looked me in the eye, said sorry unprompted, and gave me a hug. Awww, buddy. I said I was sorry for yelling and gave him a hug back. He's getting it.