The List

As one might guess, after a very late bedtime from our July 4 adventure:

as can be expected - the next day she was a dumpster fire:

and my little angel was gone. Gone, I tell you. Gone. The screaming and the crying that happened was monumental. She was no angel for most of the rest of the week.

It was a rough remainder of the week and we paid dearly for the 11pm bedtime on the fourth of July.  Everything, and I mean everything was a fight. It was a fight to eat breakfast, put on clothes and and well  - all the things. It was a struggle. Period.

Forget the terrible two’s. 4 year olds with not enough sleep are just the worst.  There were fireworks and tears all week long. It was definitely independence week - at least according to her - it was her way or nothing.

Until.

Until I made the list and let me share this pro parenting tip with you: make a list! This is fantastic! And works!

I dunno if it was because she was so sleep deprived that she would just need some guidance or maybe she liked the tasks broken down one by one,  but one day were struggling and I found a pen and paper and made a list of the things she had to do that day.

One of the top priority things we had to do that day was to get her a haircut  because her bangs were getting completely out of control.

“I don’t want a haircut! No haircut!!!”. she screamed.

You get the idea: things were going the wrong way. Until we made the list:

As you can see above I checked off the first one, but she was all over this and went to get her purple crayon so she could scratch things off as we went along. We had 5 tasks to do that Saturday:

1. Have lunch (that’s supposed to be a pizza)
2. Put on clothes because we were still in PJ’s
3. Brush your hair. It’s growing out and longer than it’s ever been, but now there’s a new struggle in town: the brushing of the hair.
4. Get a haircut. It was just a bang trim so 10 minutes at most is all it will take
5. Come home and have a nap. You don’t have to sleep and you can watch YouTube as long as you’re quiet. The nap  is more for dad than you.

And then once all those things were done we would still have the entire afternoon to go and have some fun!

I tell you this list thing I have going on is magical. I should patent it. I don’t know what it was but her having a list checked all her boxes. 1 She brought her list all over town. In the car - at the hairdressers - you name it and the list came along that day.

And I was a man of my word and after the list, we went to the “big park” at the elementary school and then we went to our local ice cream stand for outrageously huge servings of ice cream. Of course, the list came along. Of course, we at all the ice cream and of course we didn’t feel to good after and just wanted to curl up with the dog and collapse.

And the best part of this story is that this list thing is still working. This week we hit perfect score on behaving for mommy when I am at work for the entire week! :

I wonder how long this list thing will work? I don’t know, but I will tell you I’m never taking her out late again. It’s not the party that’s the problem.. it’s the hangover.