Fighting a Battle of wills ... and on the edge of losing

The past 2 months have been pretty difficult in our house. As we trudge through the terrible twos I find myself not liking my life a good bit of the time and most often I catch myself either yelling or punishing my child. This is not what I want for my family. Monday was my breaking point. As I called my boss to let her know for the 3rd day in a row I would be late to work .... Levi screaming in the background ... I broke into tears.

We were 30 minutes late that morning and I was already exhausted by the struggles of the morning ... the fight to get him up and out of bed, bathroom, picking out the clothes, dressed, shoes, jacket, in the car seat, then out of the car seat once at school, in the classroom, hands washed and ready for class. I had 1.5 hours that morning to get us up and ready and to drive the 3 miles to work and we were still 30 minutes late. I could no longer take the fight. I felt defeated, exhausted ... like a failure.

I sat down with the director of our school to try and get some advice about what I could do to regain the control in my house. After talking and crying for about an hour she gave me some ideas we have started to implement them to help the nighttime routine go better so Levi has set limitations and sleeps in his bed which will in turn give him the rest he needs so he will wake up in the morning for me.

After 3 days he has done pretty good, he has slept in his room and only last night did he actually give me a fight about it and get out of his bed a few times. We are picking out his clothes the night before so there are no fights in the morning about what underwear he wants to wear (yes we are potty trained now ... almost 4 weeks now!!!!!). It only took one morning of me putting on his shoes with him still in his pajamas and he got dressed very quickly after that.

I am hanging in there but don't have many people to talk to that are in similar situations as me so it has been tough. Not having someone to talk to at the end of the day to release some of the frustrations is difficult so it has been hard to get through this stage of the game.