Battle of wills

We are finally mostly better at our house! I took N in for a follow up appointment today and while she still has a lingering cough she no longer has croup or an ear or eye infection! Yay, M is also better and now the only one who is under the weather is my hubby with a sprained ankle and sore throat. I will take that over everyone being sick any day of the week.

While it is great that we are all better now, my parenting skills were seriously lacking while we were all sick and now I have to get my butt back in gear. Some things that were lacking was my caring about where and what we ate. Every morning I just put out pop-tarts and a bowl with sippy cups of milk then went back to bed while my kids watched tv. (I know there is someone reading this thinking what a horrible mom I am for doing that but if you had the nights I had with a sick baby you wouldn't judge me) So because I went back to bed they took their pop-tarts and sippy cups into the living room where they mashed the pop-tarts into the couches and carpet, left sippy cups turned upside down to leak all over the couch and floor and well you get the picture. It didn't just end with breakfast, I did this with most meals because I was trying to take care of the baby and everything else so my couches looked HORRIBLE!

Mondays are my super cleaning days where I clean every inch of my house from top to bottom. So yesterday as I was vacuuming my couches I was so disgusted with them that I thought there has got to be a way to get these clean so I look and sure enough I can strip them all the way and wash the cushions in the washer, which I ended up doing and now my couches look beautiful and practically new once again. Because of all the work it took to get them clean I am determined to keep them clean so I instilled a new rule of no food or drink on the couches - much to my family's dismay. But seriously my husband spills as much as the kids so I mean business!

Well today O wanted  a banana so I told him he could have one up to the table. He yells no and I tell him then no banana. I have the banana in my hand and unpeeled so he can see it and he keeps yelling at me to give him the banana and I keep calmly telling him that he can have his banana at the table. Finally he walks over and gets the banana then tries to run past me into the living room (he was watching Toy Story 3 and wanted to eat his banana on the couch) I of course grabbed him and sat him on the chair and told him he could eat the banana at the table. He then tries to run into the living room again and this time I take the banana out of his hands and tell him he can eat it at the table. I just kept telling him over and over again what I would let him do and never told him what he couldn't. Well after about five minutes of us going back and forth he finally walked over, sat at the table and said, "eat the banana at the table" I said o.k. and gave him the banana and he happily ate his banana, while watching Toy Story 3 while sitting at the table. After finishing the banana he then asked for an apple and I told him he could eat it at the table, he told me no on the couch, I told him at the table, he said o.k. at the table and ate his apple at the table as well. For dinner he just came and sat at the table and didn't even try to take his food into the living room.

The moral of the story is: stick to your guns, fight the battle, be consistent, be a broken record and eventually it will pay off! If you give them an inch they will take a mile.