A Year of No Yelling Day 17 Featuring Skywalker Gibbons AKA Star Wars Monkeys and Dracorex Hogwartsia AKA Harry Potter Dinosaurs

Some success today!

I had a bit more energy today although my mind is still enshrouded in fog. I've had a tickle in the back of my throat for the last week. I'm hoping I'll fight off whatever it is instead of succumbing to it. Maybe that's where all my energy  going.

I tried to be loving and kind today and had sucess! I spent a few minutes one-on-one with each child with the goal to make them laugh. We had a fun time together today.

The house was in shambles right before Drek came home and I needed their help in cleaning up the huge mess they had made in their rooms. Thanks to recording what sets me off I now know that cleaning with my children is stressful for me. So I came up with a creative way for them to clean:

I told Ash she was a scientist who was trying to study a rare animal. The animal's natural habitat is clean, so the animal will only stay in a place that is clean. She and I raced to clean our rooms (or labs) and when the animal (Daddy) came it would go to the cleaner room/lab. If it picked her room/lab, she could study it and since she was the first scientist to study it, she could name it.  It gave us a chance to talk about Skywalker Gibbons and the Hogwarts Dinosaur, Dracorex Hogwartsia.

I told Alexa there was a unicorn coming! Unicorns like clean places. She and I raced to clean our rooms (or castles) and when the unicorn (Daddy) came it would go to the cleaner room/castle.

It worked out surprisingly well. I kept Tabs in my room while I cleaned in relative peace and the girls worked hard to clean their room. When Daddy came home we informed him he was a unicorn/unnamed animal and the girls thought that was so funny.

Of course, the kitchen was a disaster, but you can't win them all.

After the girls went to bed Drek and I left them with a babysitter so we could go to a ballroom dance class! It was wonderful to be alone together and so much fun to be doing something as fun as a ballroom dance class! It was just a one-time class, but it was so spend some time together.