chips before lunch

Neither B. nor I come from a family of yellers.  I can count on one hand the times in my life that my father yelled.  B. has 2 stories that he relays frequently about the few times that his father yelled.  At this point, though I'm sure they were founded at the time, they seem pretty silly.  B.'s favorite was when he walked in to his house after church and his mother started making lunch.  B., being the growing boy that he was, started eating chips.  The way I've heard the story, his dad walked in and started yelling that he should not be eating chips and he was going to ruin his lunch.  Apparently, even B.'s mom looked at him in amazement and wonder as to why it was such a big deal on this day.

Today, was a chips before lunch breakdown for me.  Here is the lead up...

I didn't feel well this morning but B. had to work.  He was FANTASTIC and kept the kids with him from the time they woke up at 5:45 until he had to leave at 7:15.  Then, they were all mine.  We played and had breakfast until I put K. down at 9:00; a pretty typical morning.  Usually, I get in the shower at 9:00 and A. plays by herself or reads, sometimes it is in her room but most of the time she sits on the bathroom floor and jibber jabbers away in her typical A. self.  Today, she for some reason could not sit still and was walking all around giving this weary mom a heart attack that she was going to fall on the wet floor.  She did, and grabbed onto our new towel rack that my hard working husband just hung last weekend. It fell off the wall.  I screamed, she screamed and fell into the scale which made a really loud noise and K. woke up.  I took a deep breath, sat A. down and K. fell back to sleep.

We then had a little time where we played one of A.'s pretend games.  I think she was Santa and was passing out puzzles and taking pictures or something like that.  She continued to climb everywhere including my bed where she pulled all of the candles off of the wall and then I found her climbing on her window sill in our 3rd story house.  A LONG hour passed and it was time for swimming lessons.

A. was so excited about the lessons this morning.  She woke up talking about her teacher Ms. Colbi, she called Aunt Stacy to see if she would come watch her, put on her own swim suit etc etc.  However, they called her name to go into lessons and she screamed as if someone told her King Herod, witches, goblins, and deep freeze were all coming to get her.  Here is one of the many blogs about fears if you can't imagine how loud or horrible the curdling scream actually was.  Anyway,  I tried to talk to her, I tried to tell her I was disappointed, I tried to drag her in, I finally put her in the dressing room for her to calm herself down by herself.  I told her we weren't leaving and that she could sit in there by herself until the lessons were over.  I think she was fully prepared to sit in there for 30 minutes.  Again, I took a deep breath and went back in there and simply told her that the other little boy was climbing up the ladder, her favorite part, and she agreed to go and see.  Once we were in there, Ms. Colbi took over and though 15/ 30 minutes of the lesson were over, she got in.  She was laughing in approximately 3.5 seconds and then talked about how much she missed Ms. Colbi as we walked out the door.  It was infuriating.

I was determined to make after nap better.  Since A. was in such a climbing mood, I decided to interrupt my husband who REALLY wanted to watch the Maryland basketball game and have a family obstacle course building time.  I started to set up some things and K. started in crawling everywhere.  He was having fun.  

A. played for awhile then started lugging in every single toy from the play room, B. half heartedly joined us while watching the game.

I was irritated that it wasn't going as I planned.  I was irrationally irritated that my husband that works then comes home and cooks us dinner or plays with our children rather than asking for a guys night out was watching the game and texting his friends and was only playing intermittently.

note: this was one of the intermittent times and it does look fun

So, I abruptly said it was time to go upstairs for dinner and time to clean up.  A. started negotiating as she always does, "no,Mommy, baby is sleeping on that couch cushion."
"A. keep one cushion, put the rest away."
"Baby is sleeping."
escalating- "A. just put one away."
"But, Mommy.....

Here it is...
I picked up baby, threw her over the baby gate and screamed at A, "No MORE "but Mommy's".  Put the cushion away."

A. screamed, because baby was gone.
K. screamed because he was scared
B. screamed to calm down

I picked up the couch cushion and went upstairs.

Ironically, A. had eaten chips before dinner.