Bad Mommy, bad

I am a bad mother. I yelled at my kids today, for yelling. I yelled, so... where did they learn to yell? Me? Maybe. I think that makes me a bad role model. My oldest one yelled back. Yea, that went over well. Can you say, grounded? I can.

I am a bad mother, for sure, because shortly after yelling at them I decided that I was off my rocker and through careful manipulation of the conversation I got them to spontaneously apologize for the bad behavior and put a movie on for them to watch while I took a shower. (I'm having some freaky reaction to SOMETHING that is causing my eyes to swell shut. The Benedryl is kicking in, so only the right eye is completely closed at this point and I can see out of the left. On the off chance that it was caused by a physical reactant I thought I needed to rinse off the "offending something" ASAP, and thus, the movie).

Am I a bad mother? Because after my shower I came down, finished cleaning the kitchen while half blind, and threatened the now wild children that if they didn't settle down I would turn off the movie, and within 3 minutes I had 3 crying children on their way upstairs, movie turned off because they were rough housing instead of sitting.

I might be a bad mother, because I was SO inconsistent today that now I don't think they have any idea why they were sent upstairs to read for 30 minutes. The little one had to just go straight to bed. She was in trouble, but I read a book anyway, which isn't very punishment like now that you mention it. Uhg. Parenting is not as easy as the sit-com moms make it look.