Juice Tantrum

Last night after Handsome woke up from his nap we told him he couldn't have juice. O.M.G. You would have thought it was the end of the world. He through the longest my exasperated tantrum I've ever seen him throw. Nothing could distract him from his utter desperation for juice. Around the middle of his tantrum he threw a wooden spoon at the refrigerator. That got him into time-out for two minutes. Ironically he was quiet for the entire time he was in time-out. As soon as he was let out of time-out, the tantrum returned.

Finally (after maybe 30min? I didn't actually time it so it could have been like 10 min) he spotted a banana on the counter and asked for the banana. I said ok and gave him the banana and picked him up and walked to the living room with him. He sat in my lap with red eyes and wet cheeks and quietly ate his banana. He only got upset when I pulled out the last of the banana from the peel. He apparently wanted it to remain in the peel, but magically wanted more space to hold onto the banana underneath. No can do, so I just removed it. In retaliation he acted as if he was going to eat the peel. (Now picture me trying not to laugh at my toddler trying to assert himself.)

This all stems from the fact that he is just getting over a cold. When he has a cold I like to give him as much juice (watered down) as he wants so that he can get enough fluids in him. Now that he is getting better, I don't want him to drink quite as much juice so I get tantrums since he is used to getting juice whenever he wants. The tantrums usually don't last too long though.

Unhappy Haircut

I cut Handsome's hair again yesterday. It was getting out of hand, and with the different degrees of curliness on his head, it needs to stay relatively short.

Previous encounters with the clippers have been just fine, but yesterday was not just fine. Handsome screamed the whole time. No idea why it terrified him this time. He was dancing the music until he saw the dreaded box. The box that was opened to reveal the clippers. He cried until DH decided he needed to come save Handsome. I finished the haircut with a few breaks in the middle to let Handsome calm down a bit. He wanted to hold the clippers a few times, but that didn't seem to ease the trepidation. Poor child.

He looks so handsome now though. He always looks older when I cut his hair.

Terrible twos.... err... one and a halfs...

My precious, patient, always laughing, always smiling baby has grown into a whining, crying, stubborn toddler. It comes from the fact that he wants to do everything himself. He wants to feed himself, brush his own teeth, put on his own shoes, chose his own clothes, choose his own meal.... Well, you get the idea. Now, don't get me wrong, it isn't constant. He is still full of laughter and smiles and intense concentration. It's just that the whining has grown more common and his frustrations have multiplied.

I know all of this is because he is starting to become more independent. He wants to be able to do everything on his own and learn as much as quickly as possible. He wants to be in control of something. He has to use the spoon or the fork himself and he knows what he wants to eat. The problem right now is primarily communication. He knows maybe ten words, but he doesn't use them very often and mostly only uses them after DH and I do.

Time-out is a beautiful thing.

Add to the frustrations that he's been getting up earlier in the morning. Grumpy, sleepy child. And then he's been waking up crying after we put him to bed. Grumpy, sleepy parents.

Life gets busy

I keep meaning to post. Throughout the day I'll think, "I need to write about this tonight." And then tonight will come and I don't have time to post. By the time I can, I've forgotten what I was going to write. Boo.

Yesterday Handsome got almost hysterical with his crying. He doesn't even cry this much when he falls and hits his head. Any time I set him down he would just start screaming. At times even when I was holding him it didn't make him stop crying. That rarely happens, so I was afraid he was sick or had some stick in his socks since we went out to the park to take pictures. When I was cooking I asked DH to change his diaper just to see if there was a diaper rash or dirt somewhere. Of course there was nothing. He must have been tired, but it was around 6pm when this happens and the past few nights he has been going to bed at 9pm, so I still don't really know what it was. When I went to put him to bed he only stopped crying to nurse and then continued crying when he finished. Typically I just lay him down in his crib and he will fall asleep on his own. Last night that was not happening. He returned to hysterical crying as soon as I laid him down. I can't handle hysterical crying, so I held him until he calmed down and fell asleep in my arms. Of course he woke up as soon as I put him down and started crying again. This time I decided to give him a few minutes to see if he would quiet down and he fell asleep in less than a minute.

I hate when he is so upset and I don't know why he is so upset. If I knew why he was crying then I would know how to handle it, or at least have more of an idea. If I knew he was just tired then I could have let him put himself to sleep the first time and not worried about it, but what if he was sick?

Off to a happier topic, Handsome's new favorite thing to do is climb. He's climbed at least the bottom stair, and would probably continue to climb higher, but we don't let him get beyond the first step. If I am sitting next to the coffee table, he will step up on my legs and hold onto the table. He also purposefully chooses the most difficult path to whatever he is trying to get to. If he could crawl slightly to the right on a clear carpet path to get to the toy he wants to get to, or he could crawl to the left and go over the leg, over the stuffed animal, and over the coke bottle, he will choose the more complicated path.

He looks like he has two more teeth on the top that are starting to come in. Once those come in, he'll have six teeth.

He's starting to know when things are being taken away from him and when DH or I are leaving him. He cries in both instances. Boo. I was enjoying the happy go lucky personality. Hopefully that will return soon.

I took pics yesterday in manual. The majority turned out well. I think I got the exposure right, but the color is kinda blah. I think part of that is the fact that all the plants are still dead, so they just don't have vibrant colors right now, and another part of that should be the white balance. I want to buy a gray card to see if that would fix it, but we got to the camera store at 6:05pm and learned they closed at 6pm. Boo.

Crying it out?

So DH and I got in an argument. It all started because Handsome wouldn't go to sleep. I bathed him, lotioned him, clothed him, lullabied him, fed him, and put him to bed. During the whole process he was rubbing his eyes and resting his head on my shoulder. He was obviously tired.

Usually he goes to sleep easily, but last night was one of those that didn't go so easily. As soon as I put him down on the mattress he started wailing. After a few wails though, it waned to a whimper as he turned over and started crawling to the side of the crib. Occasionally he will fall asleep after this initial crying so I left him in his room and went to my room to fold the clothes. I was away long enough to hang up between 5 and 10 shirts. It couldn't have been more than 2-5 minutes.

I went back, picked him up and calmed him down. Once he was calm, and had his head down, I put him back in his crib. He started crying again so I left him once more to give him a chance to calm himself down again. Of course he didn't stop crying, so once again after about 10 shirts I went to pick him up. This time I rocked and hummed until he actually fell asleep.

I was about to lay him down when I hear DH on the phone downstairs. His voice carries like no other so of course it woke Handsome up and he started wailing again. BOO!!! I put Handsome down to go downstairs and tell DH to go to the basement. I was frazzled, so I yelled at DH, so things went downhill.

I gave Handsome another chance to fall asleep on his own and went to fold a few more shirts. DH got off the phone and came upstairs, got Handsome out of bed, and asked me why I would force Handsome to go to bed if he wasn't tired. Grrr. Handsome WAS tired! DH was afraid he was sick and so he thought letting Handsome cry would just make things worse. I finally convinced DH that Handsome was tired so DH went and laid down with Handsome until he fell asleep and put him in his crib.

After DH came downstairs we talked about it. He was upset because I yelled and I was upset that he woke up Handsome after I finally got him to sleep. We decided that neither one of us wants Handsome to do the crying it out method, but a few minutes will help him learn how to fall asleep on his own. We decided that our max was 5 minutes - depending on the type of cry that we heard. Don't know how hard and fast this rule is, but at least we came to some sort of agreement.

Even though I wasn't happy that DH went to pick up Handsome when I thought I had the situation under control, I was happy to see how much DH cared about Handsome. He looked really hurt and worried that Handsome was crying.

Hopefully Handsome goes back to sleeping well again. I'm kind of afraid of how he will sleep when we travel to Texas for Christmas. I don't know how he's going to do sleeping in a different house. He's never slept anywhere other than at our house.

My Poor Pooper

I have to learn how not to laugh. It's horrible really that I would see someone else's pain as funny. I know I need to do better or my son is one day going to really hate me.

Yesterday I was sitting on the floor with Handsome as he was crawling around in his Santa suit (nothing else was clean). He climbed on the first step and then then grabbed the bottom banister so he could stand up. I was watching him to see if he would fall, and as I was watching, all of the sudden his face started crunching up and he started to cry. It was a serious cry. I didn't know what was happening because he hadn't fallen. I looked at the pole and felt it to make sure there wasn't anything sharp on there, and then I looked back at his face. He was looking at me with a look of , "Mommy, PLEASE help me!" And then I noticed a hard long grunt mixed in with his serious cry. My poor Handsome was trying to poop and it was painful!

I didn't know what to do! I didn't think picking him up would help because I wouldn't want anyone to pick me up while I was in the process of pooping. So I held him just under his arms as he stood there, grunting, and crying with tears rolling down his little face.

Yes, I know I'm a horrible person because after I realized why he was crying, I couldn't stop laughing! I held him as close as I could mostly so that I could hide my face behind his head and he couldn't see me laughing. His crying was just so sudden as if he had just fallen, so it must have been an instant urge to push. His little face was all red and tears were falling and he would take breaks between cries to push.

Once his sobs quieted down a little and he seemed to stop pushing, I picked him up all the way and put his little head to my shoulder. I seriously need to find something with a lot of fiber to make the process easier for him. When I changed his diaper there was just a little there and it didn't seem too hard. It was certainly stinky, but I don't think stink makes it hard to push. He did start to cry again when I wiped his little bohiney. Fiber. We need fiber.