How do I do it?

Often, during the day, I'll think about how I want to be a better mom to Liam - being more engaged with him and patient with him. I come home with energy and vigor to spend time with them. Tonight, though, I was playing with my angels, when I stepped into the bathroom for a bit. When I came out, Liam and Kalian had thrown all 10,000 legos into every square inch in the living room. Hmmm... I said, when Liam told me it was a lego museum. I tried to interact with his new installation by his lead. But after I had refrained from saying the F-word a few times after stepping on those little buggers, I thought, why don't I make a game out of picking up the legos? So I turned on some good bluegrass music (after it took me about 15 minutes to turn it on after the kids had messed with the controls) and tried to play a freeze game with dancing and picking up the legos and then freezing when I turned off the music. (sounds like I'm a great mom, so far, eh?)

Liam was into the music part, especially banging a toy like a drum instead of picking up legos. I tried a few other tacts and then resorted to my angry mommy voice saying that he would have a consequence (i.e. the modern pc of way saying punishment) - the night basically disintegrated after that. Next, came bath time when Liam, as usual, took forever getting into the bath and then didn't want to have his hair washed. When I got so frustrated that I just started doing it, he freaked out, understandably.

So here is what I think I'm doing wrong as a mommy (ok, this is one of many things):
-telling Liam when I'm angry with him and using an angry voice - I think it's good to express feelings but I struggle to de-escalate rather than escalate, especially when he is just freaking out sensory-wise and needs input
-expecting him to listen to me like I expect adults to listen to me - just like it pisses me off when adults (read men) don't listen and respond to what I say - it drives me crazy when I ask Liam to do something and he ignores me. What should I do?
-there's more to this list, but i'm tired and need to go to bed...

But FIRST - an anecdote from class today - social networking class - we had a speaker on social networking whose expertise was in many areas, including "dark networks" (i.e. "terrorist" and criminal). Our class member who is Policy Director for the Iraq Defense Department asked our guest (WayneBaker) casually, "We are trying to combat a dark network. We have tried a number of tacts, but none of them are working. What would you suggest?" Our prof suggested that Nzr explain his background, and the whole class burst out laughing - I guess you had to be there - we couldn't help cracking up when Nzr tried to get this poor speaker to solve such a major world crisis by answering a simple question. Yeah, how do you break up those networks and how do I break up my offspring dark network?