I start each day with a renewed determination to be a better mom than the day before …

+more playfully crawling around the floor with Baby Tad
-less scrubbing and sweeping the floor while Baby Tad cries in his exersaucer

+more booktime with Vivi, even pausing long enough to show her the pictures rather than reading at the speed of light so that I can move on to something more “important”
-less time at the computer

+more tolerance of Ariana’s piano practicing
-less use of the word “crap”

+more hugs
-less hollering

But as dinnertime approaches, the witching hour casts its dark shadow across our home: my nerves fray, my patience is threadbare, my good intentions unravel, and my caustic replies to the increasingly whiney demands of my children make hydrochloric acid seem like sweet nectar. By bedtime, my metamorphosis is no-less dramatic than that of Dr. Jekyll having imbibed his poison potion.

Gratefully, slumber’s restorative powers transform mother and child, and I arise with a renewed determination to be a better mom than the day before …

“Try a little harder to be a little better.” Gordon B. Hinckley