stress and failed strategies :(

This is a bit of a weird post tonight, probably because I keep getting distracted!
It's been another hectic couple of days.
Yesterday morning I had another session for parents with SEN kids, which does seem to be a lot of time taken up talking about the others trying to squeeze their uniquely shaped children into the perfect squares and circles at school, sounds like a nightmare, in fact, sounds like school is totally the wrong place for these children and I'm so glad I don't have to put Alex through all that anymore! And I'm even more looking forward to not having to do the school run anymore!(15 days to go). They told us about this 'fantastic' method of getting your kids to either stop doing unacceptable behaviour, or start doing something you need them to do, it's called '123 magic', and they swore by it, basically, you give them 2 warnings, then its time out time, you get them to their designated timeout area and they have to stay for 1 minute for each year blahblahblah, but you're not to tell them off, or make them say sorry, and then after the time's been done, it's all back to normal(sounds too easy to me). so I set the plan in action yesterday to try it out, so far so good.....that was yesterday.
We went into town today, Alex is full of it, climbing on everything he sees as we walk along the streets, I think he'd make a great Free Runner :) I popped into to see a friend who owns a little children's pre-loved designer clothes and accessory shop, (the shop's called Funkydory and it's cool!) and had a little chat, which was nice, and then after a quick stop at the big pirate ship play area - where Alex insisted that I was constantly being eaten by a shark - we did the dreaded weekly shop :(( Alex did NOT stop talking and jumping and playing and crashing on the floor THE WHOLE TIME, even though it was SO busy, it was quite stressful, but at least Alex was happy and not having a complete meltdown, and I managed to keep my cool :)

After lunch, and Amelias sleep and picking Jamie up(she was dressed up as ancient greek girl today!), the three of them were playing VERY vigorously in the garden, I told them to calm down, Jamie was particularly crazy, got a bit OTT and Amelias head got bumped on the trampoline. Because I was being ignored, I decided to try the '123 magic' thing ........................................................did it work?................thats a big fat NO. They completely refused to go to their designated time out area!
Is it me? Is it because my children are mad?  
Anyway, the rest of the evening was pretty much the same, the kids being mad, and me being stressed :(

On a completely different note, I'm going through a bit of a transition at the moment. I decided a couple of weeks ago that I'd try out these tablets the doc gave me for ADHD, I know, I hate using drugs for anything, I'm usually completely into natural remedies and stuff but my life had got into such a state, I desperately need some help to get on top of things, and its only a 3 months course, I'm taking omega 3 fish oil too, thats supposed to be better but takes a while to build up. 
I didn't really notice any difference, until about a week ago when I just started to get things done! I'm actually starting to get on top of things! I've still got a long way  to go, and I was worried that while I'm doing this massive clean out/clean up, I'm not doing as much with Alex, BUT! it's 3 weeks till the end of school, most kids aren't learning much at school either, and anyway, I'm realising that boys of 6 years old should only really be playing still anyway, and play is really important :)
So, while I'm sorting and clearing and chucking and cleaning, Alex is having fun learning about bugs and snails, and doing LOTS of excercise!
He's learnt that slugs have a tiny shell inside their body! and the sea snail shells that we got from the beach last year, are Dog whelks, that are carnivorous! they use their tongue to bore a hole into another snails shell and then suck out the insides!! He's also learnt that snails are Hermaphrodites, which means they are both a girl and a boy......Alex hasn't asked me how they make babies yet..................................

so now I'm going to try and enjoy this friday evening (whats left of it, I can still hear Alex playing on his bed) even if the kids wont be asleep til gone 10pm again! :(