fear of leaving the house-type ramblings

I find myself wondering today if I suffer from a fear of leaving my house now with my children after all que sucedió this week every time I did leave. I am not a patient person by nature and, although I fight this and my nature to be very perfeccionista on a constant basis, these personality traits constantly bubble to the surface when our in public with kids. I have high expectations for them. I am constantly told I need to lower my standards, but I feel that doing so would be a great disservice to my children. For example, I expect nice words to be used: my 17-month old cannot verbalize like my 4 year old, but he can say "please" and "thank you" with signs very clearly and uses them on a constant basis. My four-year old can be very polite but needs to be reminded that I answer not to demands but to nice words and requests.

Perhaps I am overreacting and what we need is to take a day out. It should be a bit warmer today, without a northwest wind to chill our bones. Maybe we can get outside and play at the playground and do something more child-oriented instead of mommy-oriented, even though I have so many other things I could accomplish today (like groceries? lesson plans? grading papers? finishing the last class website? trying to get over this headache?...and the list continues). Knowing that MQE will not be around for 1/2 day tomorrow either doesn't help, but I do need to remind myself that he needs his own time for his activities as well, and it is extremely selfish of me to expect him home all weekend every weekend. He is so good with the children, does so much around the house to help me keep up...we have a pretty good partnership going in that regard, of which I am eternally grateful.

So the question remains: what shall I do with the kids today? There is no school for K due to teacher inservice today and next Monday. It used to be easier when I could just put C in the Ergo carrier and backpack him all over the place. Now he is just too heavy for my frame to manage and he wants to RUN. EVERYWHERE.

Maybe it all boils down to this question: why is it so hard to let my children discover their wings and soar? Isn't that supposed to be my goal?