I'm so glad today is almost over. We just had one of those quintessential family home evening lessons involving tears and a general, overwhelming feeling of miserableness. I don't know how we could have made it any better. I'm exhausted--I had an extra child today, and while it wasn't all that terrible having three children ages three and under I'm certainly glad it's not an everyday reality for me because I'm simply more exhausted now than I would have be if I only had had two children all day, I think. I don't know. I might still be this tired because last night Rachel ended up in bed with us, which means that she slept fine and we hardly slept at all. And Miriam got up in the night, too. It was just one of those nights.
Rachel stormed out of the living room twice during the lesson screaming, "Well, I don't care!"
The lesson itself was quite innocuous--being kind to animals--and the delivery was smooth. The acceptance, however, was not.
"Wow. This is a fun lesson," Andrew said sarcastically.
"No, it's not!" Rachel fumed, "It's not because I'm whining!"
Touché. Knowing is only half the battle though. I guess my expectations for her shouldn't be too high since I can't always control myself when I know I'm the problem. The minute we declared FHE over Rachel stomped and grumbled out of the living room and crashed her way down the hallway.
"You can turn off that attitude, Rachel," Andrew told her, "You're not making anybody happy."
"Well, I am making me happy because I choose to be sad!" she retorted.
We told her that was a stupid choice but that she was free to make that choice in the confines of her room with nobody around to hear her angry tirades. That lasted for about ten minutes. Then she came out of her room and said, "I choose not to go on a walk with you, Mommy. I just want a bath. I don't want a walk."
"Fine," I told her, "But after the bath you are going straight to bed."
She played in a lot longer than she usually does--recently she wants to get out of the tub the minute we turn off the faucet but tonight she played for about fifteen minutes after we shut the water off--but was still out of the tub before 7:00. We immediately got her ready for bed but I was too nervous to actually put her to bed that early (there's still tomorrow and I'm not anxious for tomorrow to start, truthfully, and if we put her to bed too early it's likely tomorrow will start too early, too) so I read three chapters of Charlotte's Web instead of one. That brought us to just about bedtime so Andrew came in and we got Meme ready for bed, read scriptures, said family prayer, sang lullabies and put that grumpy girl to bed!
I don't think I've ever been so happy to kiss her sweet baby cheek goodnight (and good riddance)!
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