NOt letting them know that they are pushing your buttons...

The last week or so has been hard around here, one child gets going and they all seem to feed off of them and they all start pushing our buttons at one time. Josiah unfortunately missed out on watching the fireworks on the 3rd. Deidra stayed here with him while we took the others down to the end of our road to the pond to watch them. She watched from the front yard. She offered to stay, so I took her up on it. Emma was very close to losing out, but she pulled herself together and was able to go. The 4th brought the parade, we grilled up a yummy lunch of Applegate hot dogs and veggie patties, Beanitos chips, and beans and then we went up to Grapevine and went to the Sea Life Aquarium. We walked around the mall for awhile and then went to Red Robin for dinner on the way home. The kids were acting up on and off all day. Andy sent them outside once we got home to try and burn off some energy. Josiah hurt Tracie by kicking her in the chest on the trampoline (on purpose) and so I called them in and sent them to bed instead. I was feeling really low last night. I'll admit that I've been losing my temper lately. It's hard not to when they are constantly pushing your buttons, alot of times more than one child doing so at the same time. This morning, I told Andy that I think we just need to really work on not letting them know that they are succeeding at pushing our buttons. Making our voices nice and even and disciplining and holding them to their consequences without yelling and losing our temper. I've been successful today...almost lost it once when Josiah kept throwing himself down on the floor and running from me when I was trying to get him to time out....finally resulted in me having to put him in his room. I've been trying to pray a lot and asking for prayers a lot when things are really getting chaotic. The past week or so has been trying. We get the results of the neuropsych testing that we had done in March on the 9th. Kinda nervous, but hoping we can find out what next steps to take as well.