I carried out a threat today.

I am the queen of threats with my kids. Very bad, I know, but I have found that in discipline, a certain level of fear seems to work with my kids, as it did with me when I was a kid. We were planning on going to family swim at the gym tonight after dinner, but after many warnings and "just one more chance, Mom...pahleeze?" (They blew that chance too), I decided that enough was enough and that I wasn't about to take two bickering children that were having a hard day following directions to the gym. Needless to say, they were stunned that they weren't going swimming after they already had their swimsuits on. However, I'm pretty sure that the next time we plan on going swimming, I will be getting an entirely different level of cooperation from them.

It was especially hard to stick to my decision after they each offered up their individual very sincere apologies. It's tough to be Mom sometimes.