Inside Voices

We're working on using an inside voice these days when we get angry. Whether we get frustrated at someone else or (more often) the dogs, yelling will not be tolerated. We don't really have a 'temper', it's just that from time to time, something will trigger an overwhelming need to yell... and again, it's usually at the dogs.

Here's where I wish I were talking about Drew instead of myself.

I've never really had a temper nor had anger issues. My mother would disagree, however, and say that as a hormone-filled teenager I would 'blow up' out of nowhere. My response would be that yes, I would occasionally do that, but generally it was only at her. You see, although it's subsided within the last couple of years, we would push each others buttons for decades and yes, I periodically raised my voice in arguments with her. Other than the occasional sibling fights as children, I have never been one to lose my cool at other family members or any of my friends.

And then Derek came into the picture a decade ago and brought his always-calm-never-upset attitude along with him. I became even more laid back and even keeled being around him for so long and we simply never raised our voices at each other. But fast forward to the past few months and there you will notice a change with my volume. Don't go thinking that all I do is yell all day, we're talking about only a handful of incidents in the past few months in which 95% of those had to do with the dogs. Only one time did I raise my voice at Derek, yelling at him for something trivial, however, something that he knew would make me upset.

I know I've posted on here several times before about the dogs and their annoyances, but Lacy, our old girl, is really testing our limits and bringing out the worst in me. She's completely lost her ability to tell us when she has to pee and will often leave 'presents' for us in the dining room. If a sippy cup is left out, it will be devoured and she will take food straight from Drew's hands now and again. It's as if she knows she's dropped down to 2nd tier and is lashing out. And let me remind you that I'm with the dogs about 22 out of the 24 hours a day since I work from home.

All this prefacing leads me to Friday night. The night where I lost control.

I had gotten Drew's dinner prepared and we were finishing up getting ours plated when I look over to see Lacy crazily licking Drew's hand that was not in use and just hanging down. He really had no idea she was doing that as he was concentrating so hard on scooping yogurt with his other, but I saw it and exploded. Granted, she had left 9 pieces of poop in the dining room earlier that day and I was already stressed about other things, but I lost it on her. She made my blood boil in that instant and I lost it.

Grabbing her scruff harder than I should have, I began to yell so loudly the neighbors probably heard while aggressively shoving her out of the room. It was all of 6 seconds, but when I sat back down and saw Drew's face, I was crushed. He did nothing wrong and saw his mother yell, make crazy faces, flail her arms, and more. Thankfully, as toddlers do, he went right back to happily eating his meal and nothing more was said.

I hated myself for that, and do right now as I write this post through tears. He simply can't see me yell and act like that again. I can't allow Lacy to make me so angry that I want to punch in a wall and need to control how I react to her better. If she has to be shut in another room while we're eating, then so be it. I cannot blow up like that again. Period. He is WAY too impressionable at this age and shouldn't be subjected to that type of behavior, especially by his mother.

So here we are. January 2013. I didn't do formal 'resolutions', but this will definitely be something I plan to eliminate moving forward. Our household will officially be using inside voices 100% of the time.