Well, we had grand thoughts, at least! Our much anticipated anniversary didn’t start off at all like we had thought or hoped.

My youngest began the day as he often does, by making a discordant cacophony of noise in his room, enough to wake up everyone in the household. He got his radio taken away.

My daughter, for the second time in about three days, peed “accidentally” and “couldn’t control” it. She’s been on TV restriction (because that was when this problem most noticeably reared its head), but we were going to lift the restriction today so we could give her the remaining presents she had – some Barbie videos and a Barbie ballet dance mat and video. We decided to withhold those gifts and continue with the “no television” rule, and will give her an alternate present tonight if she can make appropriate toileting choices. She also missed out on our special morning drinks, and had to have a regular drink instead.

We talked to the children about their choices this morning, and how for the last week everything has been primarily focused on them. Here’s one day that’s pretty special to us, and it would be nice for them to consider others.

I gave them some tasks that they could do, and reminded them of their obligations regarding their behavior. Just because today is a special day doesn’t mean a “leniency pass” in terms of what is normally acceptable behavior.

After the umpteenth squabble of the day, I confined them to one of the kid’s rooms and told them not to come out until they had a plan for interacting nicely with each other for the day. After several long minutes, they emerged, and I heard them helping each other!

We’ll see how the rest of the day goes, as we were planning a few other surprises today. Hopefully, it will all work out as planned – though with three children – things rarely do. However, we’re celebrating our children, in part, today, and that’s what we signed up for when we decided to parent.

Photo credit: Stock XChng