A dear friend of mine wrote about a tough parenting moment the other day and good grief it must be going around. As a mom I feel like a broken record sometimes and auto pilot is an easy rut to fall into. When you’re multitasking and juggling as many things as we have to on a daily basis, things come out of your mouth, it’s only when the threats effortlessly slide out that you almost wish you could take it back, but you can’t.

Amelie is my youngest (well technically the middle one) and she’s spunky and wild and loud and freaking awesome but oh my there are days when I want to give her away! We were walking in a shopping center with her older sister, Stella, and the rules were, no running, no yelling, and stay with me. She ran and yelled and didn’t stay with me so she sat outside the toy store while her sister played with awesome toys. That bottom lip stuck out and the tears rolled but there we sat, on the bench, outside the store.

Why in the world does following through feel like crap? Like I’m being stupid and mean for taking away the fun, I remember I hated when my parents enforced rules. But I’ve been doing a lot of this lately. Structure, stability, routine. Things I absolutely hate but absolutely need. Both girls are grounded from electronics til this Tuesday, they ran, the screamed and they didn’t listen (are you noticing a theme?) So when the nights got a little darker a little faster we started eating dinner earlier, taking baths, and getting ready for bed, instead of parking it in front of the tv or playing on an ipod or tablet. Reading books and drawing pictures and cleaning rooms has been it for the past few days and I have to say it’s nice. It’s taught us all a thing or two, how caught up we in media, electronics, disconnection.

So going back a few posts to the one about lists (https://redyogimom.wordpress.com/2014/10/25/lists-and-lemon-bars/)

I’m trying to make a conscious effort to de-clutter and re connect to what truly matters. Being a good mom, reading more (I’m a European history nut and just started Elizabeth: The struggle for the throne by David Starkey), taking more baths (turns out you can read and take baths at the same time=awesome sauce!), create more! An amazing thing happened, when I’m doing all of the things on the list I don’t have time to sit on my ass (ok I do when I’m blogging but that’s beside the point) I don’t have time to check facebook every 5 seconds (I deleted the app on my phone yesterday!) but what I do have time for is me, my love, my friends, being me and being happy! So the hard stuff is hard, it’s not fun and it’s often times something that we need to continually remind ourselves to do, but the reward is priceless!