The Great TV Reducing Challenge Day 2

Day Two - The Write-off

Today has not been a good day. It had such promise when Nolan quietly stayed out of Rowan's room while I was nursing this morning, and when Rowan subsequently fell back asleep for a bit. I made some yummy baked pears for breakfast while Nolan begged me to watch the Fox and the Hound. That was when Rowan woke back up and my day turned into shit, and when I began to behave in a way I was far less than proud of. Within a few minutes of being awake, Rowan got his hand slammed into the hinge side of a door (which is more painful than the other side), and would not stop screaming. While I do not normally believe in time-outs, I was far too angry to give an effective time-in, so a time-out on the stairs until Nolan was ready to apologize led to him screaming his head off, too. Which led to mommy letting out a big scream, stomping to my room, slamming two doors, and banging my head on a wall a few times. I know, right? Really productive, and super helpful - like I said, none too proud of my behaviour this morning, and wish I could have held myself together a bit better for the sake of my boys. After my few moments to try to chill out, I came back down to my boys to apologize and serve their breakfast, and try to turn the day around.

After eating, we turned the radio on and listened to music while building puzzles for a bit, then I bathed the boys and got them dressed to help kill time before Rowan's first nap. During his nap, Nolan and I had a snack, read some books, and cleaned up his bedroom. I then cooked him lunch, and as he finished eating Rowan woke back up, so I cooked his lunch for him. Once both were fed, we played down in Nolan's room for a couple hours until it was time for the boys' afternoon nap which was at 4:00. Thankfully, we made it to this point in our day without having turned the television on at all! Which means that I am easily within reach of my one-movie-per-day goal today, so I am pretty proud to be there after only 2 days of my challenge.

What now? Well, I have 5 days to go, and have reached my 1 movie a day goal, but today was a nightmare. It was stressful to say the least, so I guess my goal over the next 5 days is to make it easy to not watch TV with my boys. I want to develop better ways to entertain us without going crazy in the process. Hopefully tomorrow is a better day.

Feel free to post the progress of your own TV Reducing Challenge in the comments below!