SAD

I know I called this post SAD, but I'm not. I was referring to Seasonal Affective Disorder, which apparently affects a whole whack of people in my part of the world, as we get a lot of rainy days and gray skies. In a nutshell, lack of sunshine allegedly makes you sad. I have a tendency to not pay too much attention to the latest trendy disorders, as they often just seem to be convenient excuses for bad behavior. Yes, I admit to having very much a "suck it up" approach to life, which can obviously come off as extremely unsympathetic at times, oh well. Anyway, we had a great weekend, and coincidentally, the sun came out. It has been a typical January on the west coast, meaning wet wet wet. I may say that I am not affected by weather, I am the master of my domain, blah blah, but then the sun comes out and I see not just myself but my whole family perk up. There were definitely a few moments that teetered on the verge of becoming ugly - as in someone getting set to lose their temper, throw a tantrum etc. I'm talking about my daughters, by the way! Okay, that sort of behavior normally sets me off too, pushes all the wrong buttons. However, we managed to somehow avoid breakdown each time by simply laughing instead of getting mad. Really.  When Kate started to wail about not having any pants she wanted to wear to watch soccer on Saturday morning, I went way out on a limb and started stomping around the room too, basically making fun of her. Which she would normally totally freak out about, it would the WORST thing to do, but instead she laughed back at me and the moment passed. If only that would work all the time....
So my point I guess is that the only thing that seemed out of the ordinary was that the sun came out this weekend. Maybe we are all affected by it's presence way more than I realized. Which would suck. Here's a question for you. Are people who live in places that are sunny most of the time always in a good mood? Or in a good mood more often than we who live in the rainy zone? Or do they just have another reason for being in a bad mood? Hmmm, I suspect this to be the case, which puts me right back where I started, thinking that blaming something called SAD on your bad behavior is just too easy.
Anyway, the sun is supposed to stay out for a few days, so we'll see how the theory holds up.

and we're off....

aaaaakkkk. From the moment I opened my eyes, everything was just slightly off today. Literally, because first of all, I overslept. However, my husband and kids were all up, so things weren't so bad. I arrived downstairs as my husband was finishing helping one of our 7 year olds Emily by tying a bow on the back of her shirt for her. They were all eating, check. I got lunches out of the fridge and loaded up the backpacks. Then I decided to offer Emily some orange juice - she never seems to drink enough, and you have to remind her. Told her I wanted to see that cup empty when she left the table. As I am carrying her juice to her, something went wrong, and I bumped into something, or jigged when I should have jogged, and threw the orange juice all over my daughter.  This might sound bad, but thank god it was Emily! Because she just laughed and said "well, I guess the cup's empty at least Mom". As I strip off her shirt and send her to change, her sister Kate (who is also 7 years old, fraternal twins) yells from behind me "Stop it, it's NOT FUNNY, Mom!" and when I attempt to mildly say that it kind of is, she gets even madder and screams "STOP IT! IT'S NOT!" and makes like she is going to hit me. I grab her arm mid swing and look her in the eye and tell her that's enough. She collapses to the floor and wails for a few minutes while I mop up the remnants of the OJ.
How did this happen? I swung from laughing one moment to barely containing my temper the next. The child at the receiving end of the juice made a joke about it, while the other child turned the situation into something dark and frustrating after all. Is it just about a desire for drama, or that my attention was fully focused elsewhere that caused Kate to give in to her inner thundercloud?
Anyway, I walked away from it, ignore ignore ignore, and went outside to clean mud off rain boots and soccer shoes. The hose nozzle wasn't on straight or something, so a nasty side spray of water was shooting out from it no matter how I tried to adjust it, so by the time I was done with all the shoes, my pants were completely soaked. I ran in and changed, calling the girls to get their boots and jackets on. My oldest daughter Elizabeth (8 years old) appeared in a dirty shirt and a sweater that I know came out of the hamper because I had put it there myself the day before. When I pointed out this out to her, she rolled her eyes and wailed at me, and honest to God, I just said fine, whatever, just put them in the hamper tonight please!! and walked away.
I have to ask myself, is this normal? Do all mom's go through this on a regular basis, and if so, do they handle it any better or worse than I did today? Is is wrong that my motivation for not losing my cool on my kids is not so I don't traumatize them for life, but is in actual fact because I don't want my husband to say that I must be getting my period soon, that's why I'm being such a bitch? I really hate having my desire to express myself in a contradictory way interpreted as just being on the rag. Because honestly, I don't know if that's actually true or not. But it doesn't appeal to me to teach my girls to go through life blaming their acts of assertiveness on their hormone levels. They are certainly not menstruating now, so what's responsible for their moods, and how they act on them? Perhaps that's the goal of this blog: to find a way to teach my daughters how to manage their emotions so that they are able to express them in a constructive way, so that when puberty hits they are able to cope effectively with the raging hormones and all the rest of it.
I wish. I think that three teenage girls and a menopausal mother trapped under the same roof sounds like an episode of Fear Factor. I'm going for a coffee. :)

Introducing

Hello! An introduction is in order. I decided to start up this blog for a few reasons. I am a 43 year old mother of three daughters - an 8 year old, and 7 year old twins. I find the four of us challenged by our emotions on a daily basis, and I wanted a way to track how I attempt to cope with each of my daughters' ups and downs, what works, what doesn't, and also hopefully get some feedback from readers who may have been there/done that already. I guess I am hoping that by being faithful to the blog, I will force myself to be more consistent with how I deal with my kids, and myself as well.

I don't know if everyone's daughters already have mood swings at the tender ages of 7 and 8, but I am thinking that I had better get some serious coping strategies developed pronto, or their preteen/teen years and my menopausal years are going to be hell!!

That being said, it is important to note that each of my girls are very individual and very unique from their sisters. They each bring something different to our family, and they each definitely have their own way of relating to the world. So when writing this blog, I am hoping to spend time talking about each of my daughters, and the different challenges that I face with each of them. Bear with me - I'm just finding my way everyday! I am definitely not always right, but my intentions are good....so I will welcome constructive criticism and discussion with open arms!!

Okay, enough said for now. More details to follow.