Thou Shalt Not Find Parenting Easy

Nothing like getting smacked down by the gods of parenting. 

We've been having this problem getting the 9-year-old to bathe.  She throws fits about it every other night, starts out with moaning and groaning, leads to crying and screaming, ends with everyone exhausted and upset.  I'd been thinking about what changes needed to be made to make our evenings more tolerable and suddenly while chatting with a friend about it when it suddenly occurred to me - she should bathe in the morning when she's well-rested!  Of course, why didn't I think of this before?  Everybody is up around the crack of dawn anyway and there's like three hours before the bus comes for school - of course morning bath will work!

SCREEEEEECH!  Hold up Mama - ain't nothin' gonna go that smooth.  She went to bed easy peasy, but this morning she was hell on wheels.  "I'm hungry!"  Okay, these are your 5 breakfast options.  "I only want croissant!  I'll starve without croissant!"  By the by - she has had croissants maybe three times in her life.  Then on to "I don't want to take a shower!"  Okay, take a bath.  "No!  I'm not going to!"

The crap thing about morning fits - you can't send the kid to bed and let it work itself out over night.  She finally calmed down, ate a bagel, took a bath and went on to school.  You'd think that the trauma was over for the day - but no.  We had crazy bedtime meltdown, too.  "I don't need to go to bed. I'm not tired!"

A round of Benadryl cocktails for everyone!