Kids and the Atonement

Have you seen that commercial from a couple years ago about herding cats?  I live that, every day, now.

Having three kids is, in a lot of ways, not at all as difficult as I thought it would be.  Andrew and Emily adore Charlie and are very nice to him, and Charlie is a very good baby (who likes to be held 24 hours a day, but I don't blame him.  I'm awesome.).  That's IN the house.  Taking them outside of the house is a totally different matter.  That's where the herding cats thing comes in.  My friend Liz warned me of this, but I had to learn it myself.  Charlie went to the doctor on Friday for his 2 month checkup and afterward, Andrew ran out the doors leaving me with the two youngest and me trying to scoop up Emily, the carseat with Charlie in it, and my ridiculously overloaded bag.  We get outside where Andrew is just standing there (luckily he didn't run into the parking lot, he was just waiting for me) and I get down and, without yelling at him, sternly told him how upset I was that he ran away from me and how dangerous it was, etc.  I was doing it out of frustration and anger, instead of thinking first of how to best handle the situation.  I felt terrible.  He covered his little eyes and quietly cried.  I wanted to rewind time and start over.  But, as I couldn't, I told myself that I could ask him to forgive me, start over, and explain it all over again.  So I did.  And it went much better.  He was still sad, I still regretted my reaction, and Emily was still saying, "Andew?  Otay?" over and over.  But thinking about it on the drive home, I was so grateful for the Savior and his atonement.  Because of his sufferings in the Garden of Gethsemane, I was able to ask forgiveness, be forgiven, and put that behind me.  And I am so grateful for that.

I was a little frazzled anyway, because our doctor takes a REALLY long time, and the kids had had enough of the waiting game anyway.  Then Andrew ran out the door.  Then after I got them all to the car and started loading them in, Emily somehow managed to slip from my grasp and ran into the parking lot, right towards a car that was pulling out.

These kids are going to turn my hair gray.