Today...

I woke up this morning with the whole day planned out. We were going to have a mostly home-day, with only a short trip to the grocery store. Picture family peace and domestic bliss. I even had a blog post drafting in my mind - one of those homey, slightly inspiring posts about all of the nice wonderful things I managed to do with the boys cheerfully at my side. Perhaps a beautiful photo of fresh flowers in a vase on the clean kitchen table, a recipe or two of the delicious home made goodies I had made. Table time completed willingly, and crafts for the upcoming fall fair sitting proudly on the shelf. Instead, I spent most of the afternoon and evening having a battle of wills with a five-year-old. Who drew on the book shelf. With marker. Did I mention that the shelf was made of unfinished pine?

So here is the deal...I managed, barely, to not scream and yell (at least at first) and asked him to work with me to clean it up. To which he replies 'no'. Repeatedly 'NO'. He then went into a list of the reasons why he could not clean it up - his sore hand, the fact that it was not his bookshelf and therefor not his responsibility, that he was too tired, that Mama should do it if I wanted it clean, that it could wait until tomorrow, that it was just a dumb bookshelf, the fact that he didn't like me anyway and wouldn't even give me a hug when I got home from work tomorrow......

Don't you love those days???? I would like to say that I handled it all with gentle loving kindness and womanly finesse. I held onto the finesse thing for a while, but it really came down to "stay in your room until you clean the books off of the shelf so we can deal with it, or until you are ready to ask me nicely for help and then we will do it together.

The end result.....a book shelf with lovely green drawings on top, which he did eventually deal with, but that will need a good coat of paint to fully address. I have been 'forgiven' for getting grumpy at him (how dare I!!) and am in his good books again, although my day of domestic bliss has somehow evaporated. I manged to make some red pepper jelly in the middle of things, but somehow the joy of the process was lost amidst the stamping of little feet and the chorus of 'bad mommy!!"

Some days motherhood really is overrated, don't you think?