I had a really rough evening. I can’t put my finger on what put me in a foul mood but it is probably mostly just a little lack of sleep. Pookie has some habits that seem to come out more between 4-6pm. Bad habits.

That’s normally pooping time of night and we are still having trouble convincing him that the bathroom is the best place to take care of that. I think the pressure causes him to do some other annoying things, too.

Normally I can handle this time of day just fine but last night I was home alone with the kids, tired and started snapping at everything and couldn’t seem to stop. Pookie and me ended up arguing a lot more than we needed to during dinner and bath.

I had already sent Pookie to the bedroom to get dressed (after he poured a big picture of water on the bathroom floor). I felt like crap for how bad of a dad I had been so I told Geetle that I was sorry for being grumpy all night.

bad dadWithout pausing, she replied “Yeah. You almost got an X next to your name.”

When she is going through a stubborn day (which is almost never any more) we have a spot where we put X’s. If you get less than 3 X’s you get to do the fun thing that night.

Ouch. She was right, though, I did deserve an X or two.

I walked right into the bedroom and apologized to Pookie and gave him a big hug. Fortunately, Pookie is the best forgiver in the universe and had already moved on and was waiting for some good stories for story time.

Thank goodness I have a couple kids that help me through this parenting thing.