sounds all very normal. i think you've had a rough day and are doubting yourself.

i've met mums of large families, who actually MAKE the dinner meal IN THE MORNING, when all is calmer - so that in the early evening, when all in NOT calm, they can concentrate on the kids, instead of worrying about making the dinner, sounded like a good solution. They don't get EVERYTHING done for the meal, at 10am, but a large percentage of it. like all the preparation, washing, peeling, chopping up, getting something in the slow cooker for the night meal.

looking back on when my child was younger (and we lived with her dad), i remember being anal about us all "eating as a family" - and looking back, she got hungry around 5pm, and her dad wasn't really wanting to eat until closer to 7. So MAKING her wait, just so we could all eat together - looking back on it now, that did cause stress on all of us. i dunno, at the time, i thought us eating together, was the most important thing. Now (she is a poor eater), i'm wondering whether i should have just given her dinner at 5pm and accepted her dad ate late.

End of the day, seems to the most popular time for kids to have melt downs. they're tired, they're hungry, they're grouchy.

for my child, the solution (at that age) was for me to take the (at the time, scary) step of turning off the tv. I used to have the early evening news on, while i was cooking, thinking it was keeping me in touch with adult world etc, but when i stopped doing this, she calmed down. i only did it as a result of a parenting course i attended, when i was literally screaming at her each evening, things were so bad. The course encouraged us parents to get down on the floor, at THEIR eye level, and play with our toddler for at least 10 mins a day. As early evenings were our worst time, i tried to do teh 10 mins then. Ten mins sounds like nothing, but at the time, i felt so inadequate, i was forever saying to her, "i'll just go and do X, be back soon", - and all those things really added up. Plus they made me so tired that when i WAS with her, i felt too tired to really play with her.

i've only had one child to deal with, so i can't offer any ideas on dealing with two. except to say i admire you for waht you're doing.

Has your dh ever spent a day BY HIMSELF looking after both kids?
Parenting is the only job, where at the END of your day, you don't actually finish, you just have to keep going.
Talk to your dh about your guilt, that you're not all "happy happy" when he gets home. You're doing your level best. and you don't have to be Perfect Mum and Perfect Wife.

Your children are at different developmental stages, it must be a huge juggle to keep both happy at same time.

i hope the responses to your thread, normalises your experience. Perfect mums only exist in glossy mags - and moviestars with nannies!