girlfiend

I’m so tired. I’m not even halfway through this pregnancy and I’m done. My standards keep getting lower and lower. My house is a mess, we’re pulling wrinkled clothes out of the clean laundry baskets, and we’re eating fewer vegetables in a week than I used to eat in a day. My temper is short, my kids aren’t getting enough of my good attentions, and I just want to get into bed. My refrigerator is nearly empty, we’ve run out of all of the breakfast cereals my kids will eat and I think they both had bread and butter followed by cheese crackers for lunch today. After we stopped for cookies at the bakery.

The Fiendling is still sleeping in our room. He manages to stay in his “bed” on the floor one night out of five. The rest of the nights he ends up in our bed and keeps me awake most of the night. He’s still being a bit of an asshole, but I think, and I hope I’m not getting ahead of myself or jinxing myself here, but I think he’s snapping out of it. When I give him specific instructions with definite consequences in advance he tends to be cooperative and not throw a complete shitfit when it’s time to leave someplace that he’d like to stay. That’s not always the case. Yesterday he ran away from me twice when it was time to leave the (cold, deserted) playground and I nearly fucking killed him after I had to drag him kicking and screaming to the car, but that was the first time it happened this week, not the fourth.

When he’s not yelling at me, refusing to eat, making unreasonable demands, fucking with his brother, or otherwise being 3, the Fiendling has been awesome. He’s taken to snuggling with me sometimes in the afternoons while T naps.  He likes to sit on my lap while I watch Friday Night Lights on Netflix. He also likes to play with flour when I can bring myself to bake. He drives his engines through it, narrating stories about crashes at the flour mill, snow storms and other disasters. I think he’s pretty close to reading too. He’s been sounding out words and has been even more interested in letters and their sounds than he was before. He likes to take the scrabble letters and spell the words he knows and the names of his engines.  And 9 times out of 10 he wipes his own ass without asking for assistance.

The baby, who is in the middle of the 18 month sleep regression, is mostly sleeping through the night again, but refuses to go to sleep and screams for an hour most nights before bed. He’s taken to throwing tantrums too, biting, hair-pulling, pushing and screaming when he doesn’t get his way, and I can’t tell if it’s because of his age or because he’s not talking at all and his inability to communicate is frustrating him. I’m sure his brother isn’t helping matters much, snatching toys away from him and yelling at him for playing. When T pulls F’s hair, pushes him or scratches his face I have to remove him from the situation, but secretly I like that my baby is fighting back a little. I hate to say it, but F deserves it a good portion of the time.

Tantrums or not, T is the sweetest kid.  He has finally (and I say finally because I feel like F started much earlier) started to bring me books and sit on my lap so I can read them to him.  He’s been so snuggly and sweet and generous with kisses that it almost makes up for the scratches on my face. And he can blow his own nose. I appreciate that in a child.

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