Meta

Nicholas and I had a day today.  You know the one.  When you swear the child's ears must have become disconnected from his brain because he does not listen to a single thing you say ALL DAY and every little thing becomes a 10-round debate.  And where you in turn morph into the parent you hate, yelling, threatening to take away every privilege and beloved possession you can think of, and in general completely losing your cool despite the voice in the back of your head helpfully pointing out that yelling is not helping the situation.

So tonight at bedtime I began a completely calm attempt to discuss the day and try to draw some lessons from it with Nicholas.  We started off fine, with Nicholas immediately answering my question of "How do you think today went?"  with "It was a bad day because I made a lot of bad choices."  He then started listing all of his bad choices, which was not a problem . . . until he turned it into a stalling technique by listing all the toys he "forgot" to play with today.  And when I told him it was time to stop and finish bedtime, he lost it on me.  In response to his screaming I stomped out of his room, which led to him chasing me while screaming at me and eventually me yelling that he was making a bad choice in yelling about the bad choices he had made today.  All while the voice in my head was still helpfully chiming in about how yelling back at him was also a bad choice.  How meta.

We eventually got it together and had a perfectly delightful rest of the bedtime routine.  But I am throwing in the towel on today.  I absolutely have to deal with dishes and the kitchen, but after that I am ignoring the pile of work staring at me (this whole no napping thing is killing my weekend work quota) and curling up in bed with a bowl of ice cream and some Brothers &Sisters DVDs.  And tomorrow afternoon I just may greet Joe at the door with keys in hand. 

Or maybe tomorrow will be better.