Whoa child, slow your roll

I'm sitting here drinking my coffee (from my new Keurig!) and eating cinnamon roll cake before my kids wake up. I really, really need the time to myself these days.

You see, we have a problem in our household of epic proportions. I don't know what happened here, but sometime in the last four weeks, Gabriel has become what I can only describe as...a moody teenage boy. I wish I were joking, but we are dealing with some major behavioral issues and we're grasping at straws trying to figure out how to deal with it.

Not listening, not wanting to say hello to any of his family, blatantly lying to me, throwing HUGE tantrums like a 1-year old, refusing to pick up his toys...the list goes on and on and on.

We can't really pinpoint when this whole thing started, but I am sure it's a combination of things. When he was sick, we just let him lay around all day long and obviously didn't make him go to school. With the holidays, he hasn't been to school in about a week anyway, so his routine is completely messed up. His grandparents - my in-laws - have been coming OFTEN and they tell me, in front of him, to stop disciplining him (because how dare I discipline the little darling angel in front of them?!) so that kind of throws a kink in things.

And then the whole Christmas thing where he's spoiled without having to be good? Yeah, that really doesn't help.

I thought that lazy Elf on the Shelf would do the trick but nope. He could care less.

So now I'm in the early stages of building a behavioral chart with rewards and goals and consequences and hoping wishing praying to the good Lord that it works. This is too ridiculous.

Thank GOODNESS he goes back to school today or else I might end up crying in my closet.

Are your kids going whacko because it is the holidays? What have you done about it?