Serenity Now

I realize, and am also dismayed, that by using a quote from 'Seinfeld' I'm dating myself. But for you fans out there, you may remember the episode where the catch-phrase was 'serenity now'. How many of you also recall the second half of it? Serenity now, insanity later.
There have been more times than I care to admit when that describes me to a T. Mostly involving the children and my impatience and lack of consistency. I let something go, even though I'm seething inside and holding it in, until finally I blow! Bad mommy.
This week is our spring break. I love my children and it's nice to have them home, but I also knew I needed some kind of guidelines in place so the kids and I know where the line is drawn and the week doesn’t turn into pandemonium. Here's what I came up with.

I wrote this late last night, and upon review it sounds kind of harsh, but none of this is new to them. These are all things they are supposed to do everyday, but tend to be a little lackadaisical about. The only new things are the consequences, which I am historically poor at doling out.

We’ll see how it goes. I don’t typically use timeout, and I’ve never done the bedtime thing before.

I’m also planning on doing some special things which are out of the ordinary. This afternoon we are going to library so every one can pick out some books and I’m going to get one to read aloud (that’s the unusual part). I asked each child to choose a dinner for the week. We may do some baking, go to the park, play games etc. Stuff that we don’t get around to much during a school week.

So far, pretty good. While I’ve been writing, we’ve had an incident and two are going to bed a little earlier. Up until then they were playing well together. A welcome ceremony for some new Webkinz, complete with red carpet. Yesterday they had a stuffed animal March madness competition with a bracket created by Firstborn.

The winner was Squeakers the mouse! I’m hoping our ‘system’ will be a winner this week.