Today....

After my post yesterday about the importance of impressing God's commandments onto the hearts of our children, we had a humbling day today. It is painfully obvious that we have a long way to go!

The 3 middle children and I all had dental cleaning appts at 8:00 this morning. The appts went fine, but the boys were awful while there. Truly awful. Their behavior made me a little mad and a lot sad.

Their daddy had a long heart to heart with them when we got home and they have lost all screen time (both tv and computer) until they have shown a consistent pattern of obedience. He had to explain "consistent" and "pattern" ~ that it's what they're characterized by over a period of time rather than one or two or three times of obedience in one day. They only got 2 hours a week of computer time anyway, and very little tv/video watching, so this consequence REALLY mattered to them. For which I'm thankful. I wanted the consequence to "hurt" them enough to make a big impression.

Our 7 year old had been asking me all week to play with my webkin online so that he could watch. We were going to do that today, but I told him that even if I played he wasn't allowed to watch because he had lost the privilege of screen time. Then it dawned on him that he wouldn't even be allowed to watch his sister play during her two hours this week, and he "got it".

We had a truly beautiful day, weather wise, and the children played outside all afternoon. We had a frustrating time with the neighbor children coming over and not obeying the rules of our yard. For any new readers, this is a recurring problem. One of them repeatedly entered our garage after being told not to, and ate up the last remaining easter candy out of someone's basket. We are seriously thinking of putting a fence around our yard. Which makes me sad. I have loved the open look and feel of our backyard. But it appears that we need a visual and physical boundary, and the power to invite others in when we would like to include them, and the power to keep them out at other times. We simply cannot put our pool up again without a fence.

I baked bread today. And took a 3 hour nap. Wonderful!! Our daughter did a fabulous job mopping the kitchen floor. I am enjoying just gazing on its cleanliness! I taught our 7 year old how to wet swiff the dining room floor. It was a pretty good first lesson.

I am really tired and ready for bed. It was a hard parenting day.