everyone says, "i'm sorry"

wednesday night started out well enough but i was spent by the time i made it to bed. matt had a work dinner come up so the kids and i were on our own for grocery shopping. i wasn't worried about taking them by myself because i take them everywhere by myself, but matt was worried...

since matt wouldn't be eating dinner with us i thought that we would grab dinner at noodles and company in order to get us home a little earlier so that i could do bed time by myself and still have everyone in bed on time. matt joined us at the restaurant and had to leave for his dinner as we were leaving for the grocery store.

as a treat i let madelyn get a cupcake to share since the free cookies weren't available and she had already had her dinner. what do they say - "no good deed goes unpunished"? she wined about wanting to eat it for the first few aisles. she stopped when she realized that she didn't have her purse. why didn't she have it you ask? because it was still at the restaurant! she just cried about it. when she would complain about her missing purse i would ask her where it was - the restaurant. then, when would we get it? after mommy pays for the groceries.

we finished up our tear filled shopping trip (mason was an absolute angel even though he didn't get to eat his dinner) and got loaded back into the car to drive across the parking lot to noodles and company. i parked the car, unloaded the kids, and headed in to ask about madelyn's purse. with the purse found we loaded back into the car so that we could go home and get ready for bed.

madelyn made several bad choices during all the loading and unloading and had lost any chance of eating her cupcake. when we got home i didn't even attempt baths because mason was crying to be fed, the groceries needed to be put away, and madelyn definitely needed to go to bed. i can't remember quite everything that happened, but madelyn made some more bad choices while i was trying to get mason down (mainly being noisy when i asked her to be quiet or leave his room) and lost reading books before bed as a consequence. i know that one of the things she did was bit my leg through my jeans while being silly (it really was not a mean gesture). i was already at my boiling point so i yelled my "no" while shaking my finger in her face as a reaction which made madelyn start crying.

she was keeping mason from falling asleep so i put him down to cry in his crib while i went to deal with her. she was pretty sad that all her choices had resulted in no books before bed. after getting her into her pjs and into bed i said good night. i told her that if i had to come back i would turn off her light and went back to help mason get to sleep. while i was calming mason down madelyn had gotten out of bed and was screaming at the top of her lungs and crying because she wanted to blow her nose (her latest stall tactic). once mason was finally asleep i went back to madelyn's room.

i got her settled back in bed (nose blown). now that we were both calm i apologized for yelling at her when she bit me, said that it was wrong for me to react that way and asked her to forgive me. she looked so surprised and then relieved. we had a nice talk about what had happened and how we might have a better day tomorrow and then we said our prayer. when i was getting ready to leave i explained that since i had to come back in i was going to turn her light off. i loved her very much, but did not love her behavior that night. she said okay and went straight to sleep with no more problems.

i was so wound up from all the stress and adrenaline that i went down and worked it out on the elliptical machine (even though i am not really supposed to use it after my last doctor's appointment - my knee is shot again). it was a crazy night, but i am proud of how i handled it. and i am happy to report that thursday was a better day. at least until madelyn came unglued while daddy was giving her a bath because she didn't the shampoo rinsed out of her hair. everything was back to happy once she got out of the tub though - weird.

and today was actually fun. love.