Cool, calm and collected, most of the time

I shouted at the boys the other night. I was doing my best to remain cool and calm in the face of some complete mayhem after tea but fell about five minutes short of keeping it up all the way to bedtime. I thought I had got away with it, T was his usual cheery self about 30 seconds later, but as Mark was changing his nappy this morning he was busy telling Daddy all about how Mummy had shouted yesterday. 

I try very hard not to shout at them and I definitely have more patience now I’m not coping with moving house and pregnancy tiredness but it is still not enough to get me through every day keeping a calm and level tone.
We joke about the fact that they are going to need years of therapy when they are older but I do worry sometimes that it is going to have a deep, lasting impact. When T was a baby and W was driving me nuts, my coping strategy was to shut myself in the bathroom (the only room in the house with a lock on the door) and count slowly to ten before starting again. It did normally work and I should try doing it more, although counting to ten isn’t as calming as it could be when the boys are hammering on the other side of the door. 

The time between tea and bed can be completely wild at the moment. It was worse a few months ago when A was little, probably because I was stressed about trying to juggle bathing two boys with feeding a tiny hungry baby, but we still have evenings where the older two are completely out of control and nothing I say gets through to them. Other than not feeding them any tea (which may be a little extreme as a response) I’m not sure how to get things a little more under control on evenings like this. As always, not being in a rush to get everyone to bed helps. It gives the bigger two time to roll around on the floor together for a while if that’s what they decide they need to do before getting in the bath. But when they are completely ignoring me and running around determined not to be captured and undressed/dressed I do find myself at a genuine loss.

So I am trying my best not to shout, and I am getting better at it, but I haven’t found the magic solution to remaining calm yet. I’ve considered bribing myself with wooden toys - putting a pound in a money box every day I make it to bedtime without shouting for spending on my favourite website - but I’m probably a little old for marble jars and reward charts.