Ahhh! Hard Sunday

I meant to post on September 15th to commemorate three months of life with precious Corban. He is cute, has a whole bunch of hair, has FINALLY started sleeping in his own bed at night, is able to go to bed by around10-10:30, wakes up for a few snack at night (usually around 3 and 6), and is held a whole lot. He rolled for the first time a day before his 3 month anniversary and still does a great job rolling from belly to back. He'll still fall asleep in his swing every day or so--I've currently got him in his swing beside me and he doesn't seem willing to fall to sleep right now. I just made some adjustments--wrapping his arms and putting a blanket against his cheek--we'll see if I can get any success. It'll be a whole lot harder typing with him in my arms. . .

Okay, here we are twenty minutes later. Corban got 3 ounces of formula, nursing, and bed time. The girls had broken my rule of going straight to bed, so now they get no desserts tomorrow and no nightlight. My kids are not obedient, as a general rule. Which leads to why today was so hard.

Isaac was mean to me. I started writing notes back and forth with him in sacrament because he'd drawn a mean picture of a pig and labeled it "Lucy" because she'd done a quick sketch of a duck and told him it was him. I told him to be kind, and he did another picture of a monster, calling it Lucy. I wrote to him about making kind choices, and choosing to follow Jesus Christ rather than Satan, and he drew a picture of someone lighting someone on fire with the caption, "what happened to the last person who said that." The conversation went like that for the full sacrament meeting, with me finally stopping writing with him and him buttoning his white shirt over his head, then me fixing the shirt and telling him we'd need to talk after sacrament. We both ended up crying, said a prayer together, and then I juggled primary and a hungry Corban with Doug helping my class out.

I feel like the worst conscientious parent on the planet. I wanted these precious children, and I want to raise them to please their Heavenly Father, and I just can't seem to get anything right. And. . . more tears over here. I just feel like nothing I do makes their behavior better. They do such an amazing job helping out and getting all their chores done sometimes (Cason excluded), and then we see behavior like this. Isaac chooses to punish us, Lucy deliberately disaobeys, Brooklyn cries over things that don't go her way, Cason ignores our directives, and Corban is a cute newborn who will no doubt be ruined by our parenting.

Things I can do about these problems:
1) be firm and consistent
2) pray for help and read the scriptures