Letting the terrorist win

Aw, sleeping baby. Adorable, right? Young Margaret actually has it out for me (and herself) these days. We've been having several power struggles where she looks right at me and does something she's not supposed to, like hitting or running into the street. I think it's a ploy for attention so I need to think about how best to address it. While she doesn't like being told "no" by everyone in the house, she definitely gets attention by it so I need to shift the dialogue and the attention to catching her doing something good. That has to exist, right? Right?

She's back to sleeping in the crib...for now. I am going to further remove everything interesting from the room and then try again. I initially thought this weekend, but maybe I'll wait a couple more weeks. She's also very interested in potty training right now (my girl went no. 1 and no. 2 on the toilet this morning!) so I might take one huge milestone at a time.

One small step

Meg took her first step last night. It was more of a lunge as she moved from Andy's bed to Bjorn's waiting hands, but after she did it, we both looked at each other, smiled and agreed we would consider it her first. We practiced for a little while afterwards, but she was only saving her steps for Daddy. Bugger. She continues to put more sounds together and Ayesha swears she is saying a couple of her Urdu words.

Andy has gone from being a terror that deserved to be under psychiatric observation last night to a lovely little guy this evening who was happy after school, wanted to help with dinner, play nicely and dance with his sister and put his head on my shoulder while I type this and he watches Diego.

To get him back for being so ornery last night, I will have to record a particular gem. He was naked before his bath and I called his penis, his privates. He asked what that was and I took that as a chance to work in my ,anti-molestation speech about how he's not to show his penis to anyone except Mommy, Daddy or the doctor. Oh, and his teachers when they're helping him in the bathroom at school. He was horrified even though I have said all this before. "I can't show it to anyone? Waaaahhhh! But I want to show my penis!" Needless to say the speech stopped then.

Retraining

With the temper tantrum of a few weeks ago, I've been reading and rereading books for strategies on dealing with him. One thing that seems to be helping is making a real effort to get him into bed at a decent time. I'm now giving both kids a bath more or less at the same time. Meg loves to lay on the sling and kick the water while Andy likes to make birthday cake with the cups. It's a pleasant enough way to spend 20 minutes and then Andy can sit in the tub by himself for a bit while I get Meg dressed and ready for bed.

I'm also trying to not go in to him as much at night. His room is right near ours so if he cries out for one of us, he's loud and hard to ignore, but we're working on it. And if we do go it, it's not to cuddle, it's to quickly fix something (find a binky, covers, etc.) and leave without fanfare. The theory is that if it's not fun, he'll lose interest. A work in progress, but it helps to be trying something.

The funny thing about the sleep thing is now he's waking up to go pee. It's great and a positive step, but I find him getting up to pee in the morning is often before he would have liked to get up so he's tired when he wakes up. It's something we're all going to have to adjust to, but I am so proud of him for getting up out of bed and doing it himself. He's really catching on (fingers crossed).

I'm also working to give him more control. Instead of offering him two spoons or cups to choose from, I've put all his stuff in a drawer in the kitchen. Then if he complains he doesn't like something, I tell him to get another one. I'm also working to redirect him if he complains, which sometimes works. So if he complains that he wants X, Y or Z, I tell him to go get it (within reason, of course, the wine is mine).

Meg is just a darling. She isn't rolling over yet, but she sure can arch her back and kick her legs, like she might want to. Right now it's great to know I can put her down and she won't go anywhere. I know that won't last long. She's now usually going to bed around 9ish and waking up 6:30ish with a wake up call in the night sometime between 2 and 4. For me, it's great to just have an hour or so to myself before bed to relax without either one of them.

And speaking retraining, I'm going back to work in two weeks. On the one hand, it will be nice to be with adults for part of the day and do something other than clean diapers and do laundry, but I'm starting to get a little anxious about it. I'm overall better than I was before I went back after Andy, but I can still feel it. When I start to get worked up, I just remind myself that if it doesn't work, we'll change it. Nothing has to be forever. My plan is to work four half days through May and then go back to four full days a week starting in June. I'm hopeful the half days will help us used to a new routine at a new daycare with two kids. I like that the new daycare is just a mile away -- that will certainly make it easier if we forget something.

Tough love

Andy threw a mother of all tantrums yesterday. It started with the underpants. I told him on his way to school that if he didn't have any accidents in his underpants, that I'd take him to the burrito store after school to celebrate.

Andy: The burrito store?
Me: Yes. If you stay dry -- no pee or poops in your underpants all day, we can go to the burrito store.
Andy: And can we eat there?
Me: Yes.
Andy: I love the burrito store.

So when I picked him up, sure enough, he'd been dry all day. They put him into a pull-up before nap that he was still in, but he'd been dry all morning. So true to my word, I took him to Chipotle. It was early, like 5:15, when we got there and we were ahead of the dinner rush. He started acting obnoxious, saying he didn't want this or that in his whiney voice and yelling at me if I disagreed. I explained, as I have been lately, that it's not okay to act like that. And that if he kept it up, we would leave. I probably gave him three or four chances to act right and when he didn't, I grabbed a to-go bag, packed up our stuff in Meg's stroller and headed out, dragging Andy by the wrist.

He was PISSED. Seriously. He started screaming full scale once he realized I was serious. I tried loading him into the car, but he was wigging out, jumping out of his seat, trying to hit me and throwing his earphones into the back seat. I was failing at everything so I threatened him with spanking; I NEVER do that, but it was in the parking lot with lots of traffic and a baby in a stroller and I was feeling anxious that it was dangerous. When he still didn't act right, I pulled him out, swatted him on the behind (not hard really) and finally got his attention long enough to get him into his car seat. He started screaming for his earphones, which he had thrown, and I ignored him all the way home and he screamed. It was 15 minutes of torture listening to him breathlessly scream. It was funny it was so awful.

I finally got him home and tried to herd him into his room and he was still freaking out, screaming and jumping around. By then, Meg woke up and started crying that she was hungry so I tried to placate Andy as best I could while I tended to her. I banished him to his room, where he refused to stay, screaming and closing and opening the door. When I said he couldn't leave his room, he flopped around on the threshold for a while. The whole episode probably lasted about an hour. It was pretty ugly and, at moments, pretty funny. He finally calmed down, we talked about how it wasn't okay to act like that and then had a nice dinner together. He then took a bath and went to bed, exhausted, and was asleep by about 7:30. He woke up about 1 a.m. and wanted to get in bed with me. I told him no and left him. He then woke up about 6:30, called for me. When I didn't come, he put himself back to sleep. He's been waking up a lot in the night, partially looking for attention, and I really need to put an end to that, too.

I swear, this motherhood stuff is tough sometimes. Really tough. On the one hand, I think he's acting out. He's got a lot of new stuff going on and he's competing with a new baby. I've tried to be sympathetic, but my tactics so far haven't made much of a difference so I'm trying tough love. If he starts whining at home (and by whining, I mean pretty obnoxious stuff that ends up with him yelling at me), I send him to his room or to time out. I'm done negotiating with the terrorist.

What was great though was after all that drama, he woke up a refreshed and happy kid. We talked again about how it's not okay to act like the way he did and then he peacefully went to school -- no drama about not going, no screaming about not wanting this or that for breakfast. I hope this is making a difference because, damn, this discipline stuff is hard.

On another note, his school has started posting the kids' "art" online. Check out Andy's here. Talk about a gifted artist.

Video

I'm heading out of town (and, naturally, toward the blazing wildfires of southern California) so I'm posting this video mostly for me. He's been having a week of monster temper tantrums so it's actually quite nice to see video evidence him acting like an adorable and reasonable little boy here rather than a kid willing to throw himself down in the school parking lot screaming that he does NOT want to go home.

After this trip, I'm home for the duration. I am about to hit my third trimester (finally!) and the countdown is almost under the three-month mark. Sure, that's still many, many days left; days where I'm only going to become more and more enormous, but it's nice to see the finish line appearing ever so far off in the distance. Once I get back, I need to spend some time cleaning out the computer room in preparation for moving all the equipment down to the basement and turning this into the nursery once again. I'm rather looking forward to it. Well, right now anyway.

Meanwhile, I tried in vain last night to get Blogger to upload this successfully, but it turns out it's not good at videos over a few seconds so I had to go back to YouTube. Let me know if you have any problems.

Whining and crying

Andy is really starting to perfect the temper tantrum. Worst of all, he's now throwing them about totally stupid things, like when he breathlessly shouts through tears, "I...don't...want...the...monkey...cup!" Yes, folks, the thought of the monkey cup over the Sponge Bob cup is worthy of 20 minutes of tears. I'm doing my best to ignore it when possible, put him on the time out step when it seems appropriate and try to keep my wits about me when he manages to push my buttons...just right.

Course, the bugger will be obnoxious for an entire day and then it comes bedtime and he comes at me wanting more hugs and I just melt.

We've been talking to Andy a little about the new baby. The only concept that has seemed to stick is that sometime around his birthday, we'll get a new baby from the hospital that will come home to live with us. So now he keeps saying, "I'm getting a baby for my birthday." Not quite right, but he's thinking about it.

I'm still on the hunt for decent maternity clothes. I have had some luck with cute pants from Target and Gap Maternity. What I'm struggling with now is tops that are at least semi-work appropriate. I have started branching out to look in the Women's sections for some stuff. It's not quite right, but there seems to be a much larger selection of better items there sometimes than in the maternity section. At least it's getting cooler so I can start layering and wearing sweaters. Sigh. Is it February yet?

Shoes, letters and tantrums

It's official - I have now spent $30 on a pair of kids' shoes. I had tried to avoid it as long as possible, but I finally broke down and did it, buying a pair of Merrell shoes from Nordstrom. In my defense, I did have $20 left on a Nordstrom gift card. He has been wearing a pair of hand-me-down Stride Rite brown saddle oxfords that I love (and Bjorn hates, naturally), but he has now outgrown the size 6 shoes. I figured he needed another somewhat nicer style shoe, you know, for all the formals and proms he goes to, or more likely the occasional event where just sneakers wouldn't be enough.

Andy continues to amaze me with his numbers and letters as well as his ability to throw a temper tantrum. He now proudly can point to A, O and Y when he sees them. Just this morning he pointed out about half the letters on my George Mason t-shirt and managed to get most of them right. He also points to things and counts them. He can usually get to four or five before he starts skipping to seven or nine. I'm quite impressed. Similarly, his ability to just throw down and have a temper tantrum is impressive. I guess I thought a tantrum was him jumping up and down demanding more ice cream, but his is different. Rather, he just starts to scream/cry hysterically often because he can't have something (like going outside when it's 20 degrees). I try to be mindful that he's like that when he's tired and hungry, but in those situations, usually he won't let me feed him or console him to calm him down. It's not his most attractive moments, nor mine for that matter.

Non-book reading book club

So I've been talking to some of my soccer friends about how we can get out to games, but set a social event and we can't figure out how to do it, usually because our spouses aren't as supportive of happy hour as they are a scheduled event. So my sister recommended we have a book club that doesn't actually read books. Rather, we'll get together and talk about how we'd like to read books over wine and snacks. Our husbands can't argue because hey, who lobbies against reading. My friends are totally down with the idea and have even suggested we pick really hard books like Ulysses so at least we'll be a very literate non-book reading book club. We will also discuss trashy magazines we would like to read if we had time. I'm rather looking forward to it.

In less fun news, my temper-tantrum throwing child is still in residence. I've decided the antibiotics must be finally taking a tool on his tummy making him uber cranky. I've half-decided to cut the dose for the weekend and see if he doesn't start to improve. He's been on it a week now so I think it's done most of it's damage and at this point, another cold would be an improvement over this misery.

Code Brown

Me: Bjorn, we have good news and bad news. The good news is he didn't freak out when I gave him a bath. The bad news is we had a code brown.
Bjorn: Code brown, huh? Was it near the potty?
Me: Kind of. If you consider my leg near it.
Bjorn: Your leg? I'm not sure I even want to hear how that was possible.

That's right - somehow my kid managed to use my leg as a toilet. I had him undressed and ready for his bath and was in the process of talking up how fun his toys are and doesn't he want to get in, blah, blah, blah, when he came and sat on my lap. And proceeded to use it as his personal toilet. Odd, it felt warm, but it wasn't the same as when he's peed on me. Isn't this great? I can now tell the difference in his bowel movements based on the warmth it brings to my leg. Mad skillz, my friends, mad skillz. I know you're all jealous.

On a more positive note, we didn't have any temper tantrums tonight. I took him to Wegman's in the evening to get stuff for the office pot luck tomorrow and he was a good sport. We looked at the train, played with twist ties and he was helpful in picking out what he wanted for dinner later. And then when I got home, we put him in the booster chair at the table and when I asked him if he wanted things, he nodded and then ate them happily. He even asked for "addle-sauz" (applesauce) which I understood and brought him. It was pleasant all around.

Oh, and in case you missed Saturday Night Live this week. Check out this digital video short. It was on network TV, but still, you might not view this at work.