March 26, 2012 ~ You Know That Mom in the Grocery Store?

You know that mom in the grocery store?

You know the one. The one with the screeching child who refuses to behave? The one that everyone stares at and asks themselves, "can't she just control her kid?" The one with the look on her face that says she'd rather be having a triple root canal instead of taming toddler tantrums?

Yeah. That was me today.

Every other week I take Billy to the grocery store. So, it's not like this is a new thing. But his behavior today was brand new. Let's go through my quick trip that ended up taking an hour...

Would he sit in the cart? No. Bellowing at the top of his lungs- yep. Ok, so I carry him. We walk into the store and he starts patting his belly, meaning "I'm hungry." Awe. Some. The grocery store is kind of like "water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink."

Of course, first stop: veggies. He sees tomatoes. "Mommy, apple!" and reaches to get them. Then there's avocados. "Mommy, apple!" and reaches for those. Of course, I'm holding him and he's squirming to get down and get the "apple!" Onions, potatoes, artichokes, peaches and lettuce were also all renamed "apple." He tried to eat the grapes and strawberries when I put them in the cart. And, of course, he wanted the actual apples that I picked up, because he kept saying that he wanted apples. If fruit weren't priced by the pound I probably would have given him one. So then he decided that we needed romaine. Ok, not actually, but it was a good price so I let it stay in the cart. Then he decided that he wanted fresh green beans. He doesn't like green beans. Except today. In the store. Can't have them? Screaming, kicking, wailing on the sticky floor. Oh, yeah. Oh, and the potatoes? He actually tried to eat one raw. Yum!

Then I let him push the cart around to calm him down. He was very upset by the nice lady who had grapes in her cart. She was, apparently, not allowed to buy grapes. At least, according to Billy.

Down, down, down to the dairy aisle. Milk. No problem. Ok, except the twenty-five pound dead weight in my arms. Whatever. On to the yogurt. Can't live without Chobani. It's his must-have. In the words of Billy: uh, oh.

I started adding different flavors to the cart. All of a sudden he grabbed one and clung to it for dear life. "Mine!" I could almost hear him say. He wouldn't let go, but I figured that if it would placate him, who cares if he holds it?

Then it was down the freezer aisle for frozen peas. "Why can't I open the freezer doors?" tantrum. Oh, yeah. On the floor, writhing, wailing. "Gimme, gimme" tantrum right there. So. Friggin. Awesome. Pick up crazy alien monkey baby and haul him off to the mac'n'cheese aisle.

Ooh, the blue box. Oh yeah. He knows that box. "Just behave and I'll make you mac'n'cheese when we get home!" I plead. So, he starts grabbing blue boxes and chucking them into the cart. The more the merrier in his mind, right? He was adding them as fast as I could put them back on the shelves.

And cue the long line at the registers.

I'm back to holding him, which makes unloading the cart and paying a real feat. He still wouldn't let go of the yogurt. Not for his life. That was his. HIS.

So, I somehow get him out of the store, in the car, groceries in the car and the cart to the cart stand. I settle into the driver's seat and breath a sigh of relief. "Phew!" We made it out alive. (Because if the other patrons didn't kill us over the many screaming moments-not all listed here...)

It's then that I hear a weird sucking noise.

Ok. So imagine that you're a toddler. A hungry toddler. And you've been cuddling with a Chobani yogurt for the past half hour. What do you do? Clearly, you sink your teeth into the top of the container, puncturing a hole. And then what? Well, clearly you suck the yogurt out of your new handy, dandy hole in the lid.

And, ok. Have to take that away. OMG. Loss of yogurt brought on a new tirade. I believe I may have heard Billy's entire vocal range in the various screams that propelled us the whole way from the store to home.

So how was your day?

October 24, 2011 ~ Sick Day Cultivates Budding Artist

Since yesterday Billy came down with a fever, it was obvious that he was going to have to stay home today. Fortunately, his fever broke sometime between 2 and 5am. Yes, I know this for a fact.

In the dark of night all of a sudden there was loud shrieking. Not the typical, "wah, wah" of a regular baby cry, but a definite voice-cracking, terrified scream. I ran in to check on him. He was sitting up, wide awake, whimpering. He saw me and put his hands up, begging for me to pick him up. I rocked him, but he was clearly not going to just fall back to sleep.

Unfortunately, Billy is prone to night terrors. It's been a long time since he's had one. But since he was just a tiny lil guy, he has often woken up in the middle of the night screaming- about since the time that we stopped swaddling him. He often talks in his sleep saying "Mama" or "Dada", so I suspect in his terrors he is alone. When he wakes up he neds company for a long while.

So, I brought him into the bed with us. I even gave him is own pillow (a very flat one.) He was content for about five minutes until he started giggling and clapping. Then he started slapping Daddy on the back. Ok, time to go back to the crib. He went right back to sleep in his crib.

We started our morning examining his art hanging on the wall in the kitchen. He was so excited to see the pciture he drew (I loosely use that term) yesterday, that I decided to give him crayons first thing this morning. I had to break open a new box sine he broke all of the crayons I gave him yesterday. He was excited to see new colors in the box and colored furiously. He kept going back to see his art hanging up. He's so excited that I hung it up. But I had to take the crayons away after he wanted to carry the crayons all over the house and presumably try them on things other than paper.

I decided to take him up to Sam's Club to get more fruits and Chobani. I needed food for his lunch and dinner, so I figured, since he seemed ok, that we would go get him some treats. We came home and he had Chobani for lunch. He even picked out which flavor he wanted out of the fridge and handed the container to me.

The day deteriorated from there.

He refused to take a nap. I tried everything. More stuffed animals in the crib. More milk. More rocking. Nope. I finally gave up and got him up to play. But, because he was so tired, he was miserable. We tried all kinds of toys. I set up his tent fort. We threw toys for Buddy. He would be happy for a few minutes, but every little thing would set him off. It doesn't help that Buddy has a cone on his head and keeps running in to Billy, knocking him over and setting him to wailing.

Finally! Finally, he was so tired that I was able to get him to go to sleep. It was a fitful sleep and didn;t last long, but it made a world of difference in his mood. Grandma had suggested I drive him around, but he wakes up as soon as I get him out of the car and then refuses to go back to sleep. And of course, if I'm driving around for naptime just to have him sleep, then i lose those crucial minutes of time when I can get things done. This time is important to me- he wants to help me with whatever I'm doing, and if I'm doing something that would be dangerous for him (like cleaning the toilet with chemicals), then I don't want him around for that.

It's not that I don't want him around. I tried once to clean the den with Green Works. I'm constantly cleaning the coffee table. So, I decided to try to clean it with him around. Buddy did something that required being yelled at. In the two seconds it took to yell at Buddy "Hey, stop that!" I turned to find Billy putting his mouth over the back of the spray bottle. 1.) thank God it was the back and 2.) it was like Billy was lying in wait for me to turn my head for literally 2 seconds to try to kill himself. He wasn't even near the bottle at the time I started yelling at Buddy. So, now I don't do things like that when he is around.

Here is how I knew he was ready to take his nap:

Billy, don't squeeze the Charmin!

After naptime Billy was a happy baby again. We learned all about cameras and cell phones, took a turn around the court on the Green Piece of Awesome, chased down some big sticks, played with airplanes and just had a good ole time. I let him play with clay and took his handprints in the clay.

So, I'll leave you today with a picture of Billy learning about size.

Billy went and got Daddy's shoes and asked me to put them on him. He quickly learned that walking in Daddy's shoes is much harder than he thought, no matter how much he tried.