Not Parenting at its Finest

Yesterday was not parenting at its finest.

 My teenage son was sick with strep throat, so I worked from home in order to take him to the doctor, get meds and make sure he was okay. He was grumpy, but bearable.

However, when my 10-yr-old son returned home from school, that's when the fun began. Grumpy, sick, restless teenage son started messing with his little brother, who is notoriously short-fused.

Little brother lost his temper and kicked older brother in the knee ... older brother's inured knee. Older brother lost it and smacked younger brother back ... which had me jumping into the argument, yelling, the dog hurrying from the room due to all the angry noise.

Moments like these make me wonder what I'm doing wrong. or right.
Am I raising heathens?
How much to punish, who to punish?
What could I have done preventably to keep this from happening in the first place?
Is it even possible to keep this from happening?
Why are boys so physical?

Please tell me other people have moments like this with their children.

Moments where they want to tear out their hair and lock up their kids in the closet and seal their mouths with duct tape.

Parenting it hard, yo.



 

Single Parenting is kicking my butt

And I'm not even divorced yet!!

I moved out over a year ago, taking the kids with me, and moved in with my mom and stepdad.

After living with them for a year, I decided I needed to have my own place,

and found this lovely little apartment on a greenbelt that has a fenced in yard 

and allows big dogs.

It's perfect!!

Here's our backyard:

And here's the main living area looking out on the backyard:

and here it is with some furniture:

Finances are TIGHT.

I've got two jobs.

One is your average 40 hours of a week job, 

and the other is as doing freelance writing.

My two boys just finished up playing their fall sports, Remy soccer, Donny football.

Waking up at 5:30am to get Donny to those early morning football practices were TOUGH!

And, Annie, she just keeps up with all of us and tags along.

My husband lives in Austin, but is about to move nearer to us here in North Texas.

and it looks like he may have to spend a few weeks on my couch before he gets his own place.

I hope I don't end up killing him.

We're not divorced yet, but I don't see us getting back together.

But at least we can get along for the kids' sake.

We can agree on ONE THING...

that Donny & Remy mean the world to us both.