The good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Good.

My boys had a weekend of grounding.  It turned out the be a blessing in disguise.  They spent all Friday night playing together in the hall between their rooms.  Saturday morning they hauled up several board games and played together until it was time to work on their homework projects.  They even got so creative that they combined several games to come up with their own "new" game.  And, when Colin had to work on a big project which involved coloring and other busy work, they worked together on it.  Who knew the same boys that created a scene at school could change so quickly in 24 hours.

The Bad.

Saturday afternoon, Zach was suppose to get a reprieve from his punishment to attend a play at the Children's Theater with me.  He was having so much fun with his brother that he chose to stay home instead of go to the play.  Unfortunately, he did this in an immature, temper tantrum sort of way.  Temper tantrums are what caused his initial punishment...here enters the ugly.

The Ugly.

With Zach's complete rejection of me, my feeling were hurt.  A rational mother would have realized that her children were choose to spend time with each other, a very good thing.  But, an exhausted, seasonally affected, single mother tends to overreact and over-indentify with the hurt.  Because Zach decided to tantrum his way out of the theater outing and hurt my feelings at the same time, I felt it necessary to punish him further.  It was not pretty.  I spent the rest of the day crying because I felt shameful at my behavior and still hurt that my child rejected me.

The Rainbow (which brings us back to good).
The ugly storm did bring a rainbow at the end.  I was able to realize my complete insanity and choose to take my dog for a long run (the joys of having kids old enough to stay home for a bit by themselves!).  A bit of fresh air and exercise is always what the doctor orders for an exhausted, seasonally affected single mother.  Clarity was restored and I chose to spend Sunday doing things that brought me closer to my children instead of the things I "needed" to do.

This whole learning to grow up and be a more authentic me (yep, I am reading ˆThe Gifts of Imperfectionˆ by Brene Brown and learning how to let go of my perfectionism and to give me this new vocabulary) can be tough.  But I felt really good that I went down into the ugly place and was able to use it for some good in the end.