Bedtime Battles

Last night, I had great plans to renew that loving feeling with my husband. I am not great at planning romance but having won some scented petals in a tombola thought maybe I could strew them over the bed like on my (in)famous boudoir photography session. The first challenge to my cunning plan was when my 6 year old daughter with her radar for anything pink or red seized them. She is quite the artist and wanted them for some craft exercise or another. Used my most persuasive charms to wrest them from her grasp. With my daughter, this involves feeding her as she is ruled by her creative muse it is true but much more so by her tummy!
The evening went fine until we tried to put my 4 year old son to bed. None of my children are particularly great at accepting bedtimes but we have had some recent progress since I bought a "SuperNanny" book off Netmums and tried some of her methods. Last night, I put him to bed but he was not pleased and believe me, when my son is unhappy, you really get to know about it. The problem is that we live in terraced housing and he was screaming at me. "You are killing me" "I am going to die" "This should not be happening". Now, I don't know about you but if I heard those sort of things, I think I would be putting in a quick call to the NSPCC. The reality was that he had been put to bed, tucked in and kissed goodnight. He just was not ready to go and came downstairs to complain vociferously. We tried to reason with him, blank him, take him back upstairs and still the tantrum continued. Supernanny suggests you just keep taking him back upstairs but she is not here and she does not know how strong and large my son is. It is actually a struggle to take a tall and heavy 4 year old upstairs safely when he is kicking and hitting you and accusing you of being "the worst mummy in the world".
Finally, he accepted his fate on the condition that we put him a nature dvd on in his bedroom. This morning he came downstairs full of how he now knows that "porkie pies with spikes" are very different from "Egg Hogs". Fortunately, he has also decided that he is very sorry about last night and that I am really "an awesome mummy".
As for that loving feeling, it evaporated and as I blog, the petals remained unopened on my desk.
Maybe next time?