Daylight Satan’s Time

I'm seriously considering filing a civil suit against whoever started the Daylight Saving's Time tradition. I mean, really? Would it kill us to just keep the same hours all year long? My children have morphed into insomniac meltdown machines. They have been on a nap sabbatical since the first day of DST and, by 10:30 today, my son had four all-out meltdowns under his belt. It was a delightful morning.

My kids have been locked in a cycle of no sleep since Sunday morning and my parenting and, as a result, their quality of life has suffered. I am used to going to bed at 11:00 and waking up at 7:00. It works for me. This getting up at 6:00 nonsense has got to stop. Both my kids were standing two inches from my face this morning begging me for milk at 6:03 am. I walked downstairs to the refrigerator, poured them each a glass of milk and forbid them to get out of their beds until it was light outside. I did my best to remain in a semi-conscious state as I did this to maximize the potential for additional sleep. It didn't work. I watched with dread as the morning light broke outside my window and waited, clinging to the darkness, for my children to trot up the stairs.

They didn't disappoint and I knew I was in for it when my son began our first conversation of the morning with an all out tantrum. Ughhh… I wasn't ready for this. I managed to survive until mid-afternoon and then, in no uncertain terms, demanded that my children take naps. Mission accomplished! My daughter woke up three and a half hours later and my son quickly followed. I noticed that the insomniac meltdown machines that invaded my children's bodies were hanging on by a thread and I knew that we were on top of the Daylight Saving's Time hump.

Both my kids are asleep now. They went to bed at their normal time without much protest. I'm clinging to the faint hope that their sleep schedules will normalize tonight and I will not see their beautiful faces until morning has broken tomorrow.

Delusions of Craftiness

In a rare moment of crafty mom energy, I helped my kids put
together a “Happy Halloween” banner. Don’t give me too much credit. It came
from one of those foam cut out kits and took very little creativity. My kids
love that stuff though and making things with them provides me with the pleasant
illusion that I am, in fact, a crafty mom. We got out our glue and attached the
ghosts, pumpkins and witches to the ribbon. Once it dried, we ceremoniously
hung the banner on our living room mantle.

It greets us in all of its Halloween splendor each morning.
Normally, this would be a pleasant experience but my son has a meltdown every
morning when he finds out how far away Halloween is.

Five weeks? But that’s a long time. Halloween’s NEVER
going to get here.

32 Days? Mommy, why did we put the decorations up? It
never gets any closer.

Every day it is the same reaction. I do my best to ignore
his dramatic body movements. He typically falls to his knees and drops his
hands by his side in an exasperated way as if I just told him that Santa Claus
didn’t exist. The banner has been up for one week today and I tried to tell him
the good news this morning that Halloween was seven days closer than it was a
week ago. It didn’t go over very well.

I’ve considered taking the banner down to avoid confrontation but I really like it.
I feel like giving myself a pat on the back every time I walk by it. What a
good Mom I am! What a crafty lady! I’m going to have to suck it up and take the
good with the bad, completely ignore my son’s ridiculous tantrums and seriously
consider putting up the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. If he’s this excited
about trick or treating I can only imagine how he’s going to react when he’s
greeted by the Christmas tree every morning.

Chaos and Ruin

It blows my mind how different my two children are. My son
is totally type A. He’s a neat freak. He likes order. And he appreciates a
routine. My daughter, the antithesis of my son, is a two-and-a-half foot
Tasmanian devil. She spins through the house at warp speed leaving chaos and
ruin wherever she goes. Here’s what happened to day at the hands of my little
rogue:

At around 11:00 a.m. I had to pee. Normally this is a
customary, all-too-frequent (ask anyone—I’ve got overactive bladder. I could
take Detrol LA but I’d prefer not to be associated with Betty White at the ripe
old age of 32!) occurrence but today there were extenuating circumstances. I
flushed and watched in horror as the water rose rapidly to the brim of the
toilet. Thankfully, it stopped but I noticed a fairly large clump of white
paper that seemed to be stuck in the toilet causing the clog. I took a closer
look and discovered that my daughter had taken the box of wipes, which I had
refilled this morning, and dumped the entire contents into the
toilet. I slid on my elbow-length, industrial kitchen gloves and pulled the wipes out of
the toilet, rung out the pee-soaked water, and put them in the garbage. It
really brightened up my morning.

At roughly 2:00 my son got out his art box and he and my daughter
started coloring. They were playing peacefully together so I decided to take this
opportunity to clean the bathrooms. It was blissful really, cleaning without
interruption. I got so much done and felt great when I finished mopping the
floor and went into the kitchen to check on my kids. I found my son
coloring contently at the table, very into his current project. My daughter was
also coloring contently. Her medium, though, was not paper. It was my stove.  She had decorated the table, two chairs,
the stove, the floor and various parts of her body with every color in the
rainbow. I gave myself a quick pat on the back for having the forethought to
purchase washable markers and got down to the business of cleaning my newly
decorated kitchen.

All was not in vain as I
have learned a valuable lesson from these incidents: As long as I can hear my daughter, I don’t
have to worry. It’s the rare patches of silence that are cause for concern. If
she’s not talking or singing or screaming or whining, then she is, in all
likelihood, silently destroying something.

Crossroads

I’ve reached a crossroads in my parenting life. My two-year-old daughter, an angel since
birth, has become more annoying than my son. She is extremely demanding, relentless and very, very loud. It’s like living with Shannen Doherty
without volume control or the ability to take “no” for an answer. 

This recent graduation into full-blown toddlerdom has caused
me wax nostalgic about my son’s baby years. He used to be angelic. I used to
look at other children taunting their parents with blatant disobedience
thinking, “what did they do to that kid?” I was so grateful to have been blessed with a child (all of 6 months
old) who was so well behaved with such a calm, passive disposition. Boy, was I in for a rude awakening. Just tonight, I talked to my husband about
"that demon living under our roof” in reference to my son. 

Things change. I
realize this now but apparently I did not learn my lesson the first time around. Just three weeks ago I had myself convinced
wholeheartedly that my daughter was going to miraculously skip the toddler
stage. She was, after all, the perfect
baby. And, let’s face it; she’s pretty
easy on the eyes. Adorableness can mess
with your brain. I was convinced that
her long, dark locks and her big brown eyes would be enough to warm my heart in
the midst of even the most taxing toddler years. I was wrong. 

My daughter looks at me with those big, beautiful eyes and yells,
at the top of her lungs, with her face less than 15 inches away from mine,
“MOMMY! Ont milk! Ont milk!” If I don’t stop what I am doing immediately and fetch her some milk, she
turns up the volume and yells some more. I have become, for lack of a better word, a slave to my daughter’s
needs. My mind tells me it’s a phase
but my instincts tell me to lock her in her room for the next two years and
feed her through a makeshift mail slot in the door.

The Sweet Smell of Irony

My daughter has developed a very annoying habit of changing
clothes several times throughout the day. One of my good friends has struggled with this since her children were
very young and I have always secretly thought she must have encouraged it in
some way. My son never changes clothes
unless, God forbid, a drop of rain fell on an article of clothing or the fabric
is, for reasons unknown, considered “scratchy.” If either of these situations arise, then he has to change
clothes immediately. Strange as they
are, my son does have reasons. He
doesn’t want to change clothes for the sake of doing it. My daughter does.

This morning this exhausting habit brought a smile to my
face when, in an ironic twist of fate, she brought me a shirt that I bought for
my son to wear at his second birthday party. I have not seen it in over two years and have no idea where she found
it. It is a simple black T-shirt that
reads, in small white letters, “Benevolent Dictator.” 

Chocolate Factory Revitalization Project

Legos and Lincoln Logs are a hot commodity in my house right
now. My son creates tall, elaborate
structures and no matter what they look
like, I always get the same answer when I ask him what they are: chocolate
factories. He builds chocolate
factories like they are going out of style. A common occurrence in my house of late is my son's sudden, hysterical crying followed by a dramatic collapse and an almost incomprehensible, “Sissy isn’t
being nice. She knocked over my
chocolate factory.” If I were a random
onlooker and witnessed one of these fits, I’d probably think that my son's puppy  had just
gotten run over by a truck. It’s
that dramatic.

Clearly I cannot endorse this type of
reaction to my daughter’s maybe accidental, most likely purposeful, destruction
of my son’s structure. I also don’t
feel like I should punish my daughter for knocking things over
occasionally. It’s what kids do. It’s normal. My son, however, is not. He assigns great value to his creations and feels that the rest of the
world should not only recognize this value but also respect it. He’s got some tough lessons to learn.

When this happened this morning I told him that he was
overreacting. He continued to jump up
and down and scream, whining unintelligible phrases between deep, dramatic
breaths.  I was forced to threaten to take his Legos away for
the day if he continued.  When he was finally able to compose himself I explained to
him that he could play uninterrupted in his room if he chose to. I told my son that his sister could not be
expected to refrain from knocking over his chocolate factories if they were built on the living room floor. He didn’t quite agree
with this and fought me tooth and nail but finally conceded. He begrudgingly dragged his Lego basket back
to his room, closed the door and commenced a chocolate factory revitalization
project. My daughter stood by his door
for a while perplexed saying, “Bubba? Bubba?” It was really sad but
she gave up pretty quickly in favor of “helping” me fold the laundry.

I’m happy to report that the chocolate factory
revitalization project was a success. It is restored to its formal glory and has found a new home on the floor
of my son’s room. The room wrecker lock
on the outside of my son’s door has been given new life as my son’s official
chocolate factory security system. The
success rate thus far: 100%. I’ll keep you posted.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow...

My son cannot distinguish between today and tomorrow. He
thinks that every time he wakes up from a nap a new day has begun. Sleep equals tomorrow regardless of whether
it was a nap or nighttime. I’m not
quite sure how to cure him of this condition. I’ve tried explaining that another day cannot pass until the sun has set
and the moon has come up but this goes right over his head and is unfortunately
negated by the many sightings of the moon that we’ve had during daylight hours. This inability to distinguish between bedtime and naps may seem like a fairly benign condition but it does
create some conflict in our household.

I told my son, for example, this past Tuesday that we would
be getting the pool out tomorrow. He
smiled and said, “Yippee!” and did a little happy dance. A couple hours later he woke up from his nap
and began this conversation:

Son: Are we
getting the pool out today?

Me: No,
remember? We’re getting it out
tomorrow.

Son: That was
yesterday. I just woke up.

Me: Sweetie, that
was a nap. It’s still the same day as
it was before you went to bed.

Son: What? ((((Pause while he comprehends the
situation)))) I thought we were getting

the pool
out today! (Jumping commences) You TOLD me we were getting it out
tomorrow
and it IS tomorrow. (tears start to
flow)

Me: It has to get
dark and light again before a new day begins. The sun is still up. We’ll
get the
pool out tomorrow. I promise.

 The crying and jumping went on for a few minutes while he
came to terms with the pool situation. I reassured him that tomorrow was not very far away and explained the
distinction between naps and bedtime again to him, grasping at straws in the
hopes that it would finally compute in that head of his. It didn’t. After his nap yesterday he wished my daughter a happy birthday because I
told him earlier in the day that her birthday was tomorrow.

Diva Intervention Plan

My daughter  lives in the
sandbox. She’d sleep there if we’d let
her and she seems to actually enjoy the taste of semi-wet play sand. She often uses it as a dippin' sauce for her chicken nuggets.  This past weekend I was changing my daughter’s clothes because, as usual, she managed to cover her outfit and body in sand.  I opened her closet to get a comfy knit summer dress out and,
as I was pulling it
off of the hanger, she started to shake her head from side
to side and say, “No” continually. She pointed to something specific in the closet and said “Ugh” in a demanding
tone. “Ugh” can be loosely translated to mean, “give me that” in Tatum-speak. She did not want to wear the dress that I
had picked out and had picked out what she believed was the appropriate alternative. She has yet to reach her second birthday and
she already has opinions about what she wears.

Through trial and error I found the dress she wanted, a pink
woven cotton dress that was more appropriate for church or a party than for
outdoor play. She wanted it though and it was not a battle I was willing to fight. She walked out of her room and went to show her dress to my In-Laws
(they were visiting for the weekend). Clearly fishing for compliments, she batted her eyelashes and did
a little strut. She did her best
Melinda Doolittle unassumingly bashful impression when the compliments came but it was clear
she expected them. She knows how cute
she is and she seems to be a master at laying on the charm. My daughter is, at the tender age of almost
two, a card-carrying diva. Before I
know it she’ll be demanding Evian-only baths and Non-Fat Grande Caramel
Machiatos with her Honey Nut Cheerios. I
need a diva intervention plan.

Feathers are Falling

My son’s 666 may be fading slowly but the feathers are
falling off of my daughter’s angel wings at warp speed. As with my son, I noticed many changes in my
daughter's behavior upon returning from vacation. Hers were, unfortunately, not so positive.  I'd love to blame these changes on her Grandparents but, alas, I'm pretty sure they are just coincidental. Gone is the sweet content little girl who smiled all of the time
and never needed anything. In her place
is a strong willed little girl who knows exactly what she wants and will not
stop until she gets it.

I witnessed the first tantrum the day after I returned from vacation. It was a beautiful sunny
day and I took the kids outside to play. My son drove his cozy coup up and down the driveway while my daughter,
always the mimic, straddled her ride-on toy and shadowed her brother. About 15 minutes into our play session, my
daughter decided that she would like to drive the cozy coup. My son was less than thrilled with this
decision. He held the door shut with
all of his might, saying “No Sissy. It’s mine.” My daughter pulled
on the door with a surprising amount of force and stared at
me, jogging in place rapidly and producing a combination whine/cry that I can
only describe as the most annoying sound in the world. I explained to my daughter (in vain I knew
but I had to give it the old college try) that the car was her brother’s and
that she would have to wait her turn. I
then physically removed her hands from their death grip on the door and walked towards her ride-on toy.

I was in complete shock when, as I was carrying her, she
arched her back and screamed in my arms. She kicked and thrashed and cried. It was a legitimate tantrum.  I
attempted to put her down next to her toy but her body went limp and she
refused to stand. I laid her on the
ground beside the toy and let her throw her fit. I sat down and attempted to digest the fact that the terrible
twos were right around the corner. My
baby wasn’t a baby anymore and, along with the adorableness of toddler-hood,
came the irrational behavior and tantrums. Can I really go through this again? Is it better or worse that her terrible twos seem to be starting much
earlier than my son's? I ran upstairs
(during the kids’ naps) and dusted off my “What to Expect: the Toddler Years”
book. I looked up “handling tantrums,”
poured myself a glass of wine and thanked God that my son seemed to have
miraculously acquired a healthy dose of self control and rationality. It could not have come at a better
time. Armed with my book and some wine, I’m
ready for battle. Bring it on little
girl!