It's been pretty busy around our house lately.  The Laundry Alert level has been raised to:

for a really long time now, and despite my daily efforts the laundry towers are growing higher every single day.  I've barely cooked a single meal, and was inexplicably proud when I had all (okay, most... we had the chicken anyway) the ingredients to make Caramelized Onion Chicken the other night for dinner.  We've been entertaining a wide variety of contractors to give us bids on several home improvement projects that are more necessary than desirable.  I've been catching up on appointments and running errands.

But mostly, we've been busy all trying to work on a few issues at our house.  I think that they can be summarized into the following categories:
1) whining, which causes...
2) yelling, which means that we're...
3) not sleeping.

We've gotten into some bad habits and patterns at our house, and over the past few days Marty and I have met to determine our strategy and lay out our plan of action.  If I could think of a good way to incorporate a spreadsheet into this, you know I would.  Actually, now that I think about it, we are using a good behavior chart for each of the kids which is sort of like a spreadsheet for shrimps.

Our plan of action is simple - agree on our approach, do the same things, remain calm.  My addition to this approach is to imagine that I've been possessed by a Kindergarten teacher.  When I see the kids jumping off the couch, instead of shouting "STOP JUMPING OFF THE COUCH!  I'VE TOLD YOU A THOUSAND TIMES TO KNOCK IT OFF!" I summon my inner Kindergarten teacher and say "Martin, jumping like that could break the couch or you could hit your face on the wall.  I'd like to see you earn more stars for your chart today.  Why don't we start a band and you can be the lead drummer?"  When Sophie gets out of bed as fast as I can lay her back down and continues this form of extreme aerobics for 45 straight minutes, instead of shouting "LAY DOWN AND STAY THERE!" while giving her the evil eye, I conjure up the inner Kindergarten teacher and say "Let me wrap you up like a little papoose and we'll snuggle for a moment until you're ready to lay down."

I don't know how much this is working, but I can tell you that I feel better and I bet everyone else will too.  If nothing else, me and my Kindergarten teacher alter ego should be Oscar-worthy in no time.