It was a long weekend. Not long in the good sense either–I had to admit defeat and call in my mother-in-law to come help with Owen on Friday night because I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage dinner, a bath and getting him to bed otherwise. Pretty much anything beyond having to get up off the couch to either use the bathroom or get more tissues was beyond me. Thankfully, my mother-in-law swooped in and rescued us and had parts of my house all sparkly shiny clean before she left Saturday night. Unfotunately, we weren’t so lucky to have Owen escape being sick–he has officially had his first cold and his first go-round with high fevers. We both sound horrible, but I think we’re on the mend. My husband was lucky enough to have to leave out of town right as we were getting this last week and I’ve panicked ever since that he’s going to suddenly come down with this while being many miles away from home. I think he’s getting sick of me asking “So…how do you feel today? Are you coughing? Feverous? Achey? Huh? Huh? Huh?!!!” each time we talk on the phone and keeps denying any sort of under the weather symptoms, so I guess that means I can now omit the Viral Inquisition each time I talk to him.
Also unfortunately in the last week, we’ve hit a new ugly milestone in the toddler development department. My child who, other than at bedtime and when overly tired, had a pretty consistant sunny happy disposition has now discovered the tantrum. The pendulum swings pretty quickly from sunny to demon spawn acting out and the most innoculous things seem to be the trigger for these episodes. Earlier in the week it was due to the fact that I unwisely chose to change someone’s nasty stinky diaper to a clean fresh diaper when His Highness was not wanting a diaper change. Yesterday, the fuse was lit because I told someone that we were done flipping the light switch (after we had spent the 10 minutes previous going from room to room doing the very same). I feel badly and relieved that Owen only throws a massive tantrum for me. I’ve learned, quickly, that the only thing I can really do is to talk very quietly and then ignore him until he works it out. If I try to rub his back, otherwise soothe him or re-direct the fury to something else, well basically that’s just the equivalent of cranking the intensity knob clear up off the charts. I realize that all this is normal and just par for the course. It has to be incredibly difficult to be frustrated, realize you’re frustrated and be totally unable to communicate clearly enough to be understood what has you so frustrated so that it might change. We’ve been working on sign language for a while now, hoping that by at least having some way to communicate, it might help but so far not so much. Perhaps once Owen stops looking at me like I’m the crazy lady who just keeps flapping her hands and realizes that those flappy hands have a better chance of getting him what he wants we’ll get a little further.
In the meantime though, I’ll just take deep breaths and realize that eventually this stage will pass. There is one benefit to a massive meltdown though–it wears Owen out enough that he has absolutely no fight come bedtime and he actually sleeps deeply for a six-hour stretch at a time. That thought alone is enough to get me through when I can see a tantrum brewing in my near future.
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