Lights? Tunnels?

Yesterday, I took my kids to a little beach and let them run themselves exhausted, and it paid off - my wretched big boy went to bed last night with only a couple quiet requests for water and NO SCREAMING. He woke up today looking unlike the accident victim he appeared to be in my last post and we had a lovely day together with only a few nerve-shredding rounds of sibling rivalry. He started to fall apart a little after dinner, but I took him away from the rest of the family and we talked and read a few chapters from a book about the Wright brothers and ate soft pretzels in my bed and he calmed down enough to come downstairs for a game of Sorry before bed. I didn't even try to make him go to bed without me lying down with him, and when I told him after an hour of waiting for him to pass out that I was going to have to go downstairs soon, he said he was ready for me to leave right then. I nearly fainted from the shock. So now I am free from my children's clutches for a few blissful hours and my lovely husband taped Wedding Crashers and we got awesome food from our CSA today and had bacon for dinner and the a/c is working and I feel like maybe, just possibly, I fixed the boy just a tiny bit tonight.