Today was Scorch’s last day of school, so we decided to celebrate by going out to dinner.  Yeah- super awesome, right?

Wrong.

In the 30 minutes it took for me to finish working, the Hubs to get home and us to leave the house there were fights about:

1) Where to go- Scorch wanted to go to McDonald’s which was voted down by everyone else in the family.  The tears shed over this decision could have filled up our baby pool.

2) Footwear- the kids recently discovered a pair of flip flops that were Scorch’s last year (he hated them last year, btw).  They are too small for Scorch and too big for the Bean- but it doesn’t stop them from fighting over them like rabid dogs.

3) Hitting & lack of personal space- I don’t know what is going on, but for the past month Scorch has been hitting all. the. time. Not in anger, but just because he feels like coming up to you and punching you.  It’s infuriating.  And if he’s not smacking you, he’s trying to drape himself on you to lavish you with kisses and hugs and squeezes, which after getting hit about a dozen times a day, you don’t really want.

4) Whether or not we can watch a movie in the car. We have a DVD player in our van. The rule of thumb is that we don’t watch it around town- only for trips 30 mins or longer. The only time we do use it around town is on Friday mornings on the way to school if the kids have earned the privilege by being good all week long.  That’s it- thems the rules and after a year of owning this car, you’d think the kids would know that by now.  Apparently not given the fit they both threw.

Needless to say, the kids weren’t at their best tonight and, frankly, neither was I.  After dealing with all the arguments, I actually yelled “You’re acting like….” to the kids. But I walked away before I could finish the sentence because I didn’t want to add name calling to my list of sins.  It was bad enough I was yelling, no need to take it further.

After dinner (which actually went well), we came home and got ready for bed, and then all piled into Scorch’s bed for a family discussion.  We talked about bad behavior and how no means no (as in please stop crying and pleading when we’ve made a decision) and all that fun stuff. I also apologized for my yelling earlier and told the kids that while they work on their behavior, I’ll work on my patience. At the end of our discussion, Scorch says “Don’t worry Mom, we’ll just have a do-over tomorrow.”

And thank goodness for that because I really do love those kids and I would hate to have to sell them to the circus.