girlfiend

So you know, it has happened. All week long, F has been a relative angel. He’s been sweet and mostly agreeable and there hasn’t been a giant tantrum in days. He’s getting dressed, eating breakfast and going to school without argument and sleeping in his own bed. He’s been giving me hugs and kisses regularly and telling me how much he loves me several times a day. He hasn’t run away from me in public in weeks. Yes, he’s still been working my nerves. He still jumps on (and off of) the furniture and runs in the house and helps himself to handfuls of the chocolate chips I use for baking without permission. He still steals toys from his brother and has to be reminded about acceptable behavior several times a day. He still tests me and is still a pain in the ass. But his behavior has been so much better that the small transgressions, while irritating, aren’t even memorable at the end of the day.

The baby on the other hand? My sweet, darling boy? He has been possessed by the demon that has left F. For the last 3 days, from morning until night, T has been torturing me and his brother. He refuses to eat, he hits and pulls hair with little provocation, he has been throwing everything. The puzzle F is working on? T rips it apart, screaming like a banshee, and throws the pieces down the steps. The cereal he asked for? Dumped on the floor. Anything within reach on a surface? Thrown to the floor or down the steps or both. The eggs that need to come to room temperature before adding to the cake? Smashed on the kitchen floor. My coffee this morning? Spilled everywhere. The entire kitchen floor has been spot cleaned in the past 2 days. His pants? Keep disappearing. He has taken to removing his pants and diaper several times a day. And he’s fast, too. I’ll turn my back for less than a minute and when I turn around he is pantsless.

I just don’t get a break.

F’s birthday is on Monday. Four years ago today, March 5th, was his due date. He is going to be four. Four. How is it even possible? I have to make a Triceratops cake today. The Thomas Era seems to have come to an end thanks to the marketing geniuses behind Dinosaur Train.

I failed to mention in my earlier post that I threw a giant temper tantrum right along with F this morning. After he pushed and pushed and pushed I turned into a raving lunatic, screaming and stamping my feet. I felt badly about my juvenile reaction to his juvenile behavior and decided to take the boys to the children’s museum.

You should know that I hate that place. I used to enjoy it when it was downtown, small and contained. But then they moved into a larger space, a giant, beautiful space, and now I hate it. It is too big. Too much to do in a two hour block. Not enough activities that are actually engaging. I’ve been to children’s museums in other states that manage to teach things through play. Ours has dropped the ball on that. And to make it worse, there is entirely too much corporate sponsorship. Do they really need a play McDon@lds in a museum? Anyway, I hate it there, but the boys love it so I take them anyway. And when it expires this year, as much as the boys love it, I am not renewing the membership.

Anyway, I should have known it was a terrible idea to take him there on an already shitty day. I pulled the car out of the driveway and got T into his seat. F tried to climb into the car but it was too slippery and he needed my help. I helped him into his seat, got his arms into the straps, tightened, and one of the straps came out completely. Not sure how, but it disengaged from the thing on the back of the seat. This meant that I had to take his seat out to fix it. The childless among you may not understand what a pain in the ass it is to mess with a car seat. Even with latch, it’s still an ordeal to loosen the belt that keeps it secure, undo the latch, fix the strap that came undone, put it back together, get the seat back in, and tighten it enough so it’s safe. Especially when it’s 20-some degrees outside, I’m standing in a 2 foot bank of snow, the metal latches are frozen, my fingers are frozen, and both kids are outside with me. I should have given up and brought the kids back inside, postponing the outing for another day, but I soldiered on.

25 minutes later, after a car ride of me explaining the rules and expectations of behavior, especially my expectations of what was going to happen when it was time to leave, we were at the museum. The boys played nicely and I didn’t have too much trouble keeping them both in sight. But then I was helping T down a slide, and in the two seconds I wasn’t watching him F ran to the opposite side of the museum. I had to get the museum staff to locate him. When I caught up with him I didn’t lose my mind or yell. I reiterated the rules about staying close and he remembered our earlier talk about safety and strangers. He apologized and stayed very close, asking to see something else for the next hour.

I gave him plenty of warning as it got close to the time to leave. I told him we we were going to do one more thing, stop in the gift shop so he could look at the trains, get our coats and leave. We went to the arts and crafts room and played for a bit. The boys had a snack. We went to the gift shop. I said it was time to get our coats. And F started to freak. He didn’t want to ride in the stroller so I let him walk across the entrance hall to the coat room. Halfway across F took off running, back into the museum. Wisely, he stopped to see if I was chasing him and I managed to catch him and drag him into the coat room. T was ready to nap and gladly put on his coat. I had to muscle F into his coat, then muscle him into the stroller while he screamed and screamed.

He didn’t want to wear his coat. I told him had to because it was freezing outside. He didn’t want to sit in the stroller. I told him he had to because he’d run off two times and I needed to be sure he was safe. Screaming at the top of his lungs he kicked off his boots. I put them in our bag and pushed him out of the coat room. T was sweet enough to hold my hand and walk beside me. F screamed through the entrance hall and out the door. People stared, probably assuming by the volume of his screams that I was beating him with a fire poker. I pushed him down the long ramp, to the parking lot, his screams growing impossibly louder.

Some asshole parked right on top of my car, meaning I could get T into his seat, but there wasn’t enough room for me to get F or my pregnant self in since I couldn’t open either of the doors wide enough. I got T safely buckled and briefly considered keying the asshole’s car, but didn’t just in case they were having as bad a day as I was. Not knowing what to do with F, who was still kicking and screaming securely strapped in the stroller, I opened the tailgate and threw him in the back of the car along with the stroller.

I climbed in the passenger side door, over the console to the driver’s seat and turned on the car. F, who has had car seat safety drilled into him, started shrieking for me to stop, he didn’t want to sit back there and he needed to be buckled into his seat. He climbed into his seat and I buckled him, which didn’t stop him from screaming the whole ride home. At one point I left Boyfiend a message asking if I could just leave him in the car all afternoon long. Then I took a short video with my phone of the screams which I sent to B, so he could enjoy it along with me. I’m not sure how I managed to restrain myself, but at no point did I yell back. I didn’t even respond. I kept my mouth shut.

Halfway through the 10 minute ride F stopped screaming about going back to the museum and started screaming that he wanted to stay in the car. He screamed I don’t like you. I ignored it, even when he said it again and again. He screamed I don’t love you and I wanted to ignore it, but instead I told him that I loved him, and even when I’m mad and even when he does things he shouldn’t. I will still love him. I will always love him. That may have been more for my benefit than for his. I wanted to, but did not, tell him that I wanted to fucking kill him.

We got home and miraculously, T managed to fall asleep through the screaming. Rather than mess with both of them, I gave F what he wanted and left the car in front of the driveway, locking it, and imagining that passersby would see him screaming in there and call the police to report me for neglect. I brought T in the house, leaving the still screaming Fiendling in the car. T woke up as soon as I put him down, so I changed his diaper and got him a snack before going back to the car to get F who had calmed down sufficiently in the few minutes I was in the house. He’d gotten the top part of his strap unbuckled, but he still can’t finagle the bottom so he was still in his seat. His face was red and tear stained and he was hiccuping. He said, mama, I love you. I asked if he was ready to go in the house with me and he said yes. I collected his socks and hat and mittens and carried him into the house and got him a snack.

T never got his nap. I never got a break. F is still on the verge of a tantrum and I hate myself for taking away TV and computer privileges earlier, but there is no fucking way I’m going to back down on this today, even though I’m losing my mind.

Last night F, who has been in a relatively decent mood the past few days, and I were cuddling in bed for a few minutes before I left him to fall asleep on his own. (Yes, he sleeps in my bed, but there’s no way I’m staying with him until he falls asleep. Why I draw the line I don’t know, but that’s the line, and he can scream all he wants I won’t cross it.) He was a little nutty, flailing and burying himself beneath his warm towel (another quirk. He likes us to warm up a towel for him in front of the fireplace before he gets into bed) and banging his head against the pillows. I told him I was going to leave in two minutes, so he needed to settle down.

He turned to me and said, “Mommy, I like Christmas time. It is my favorite… (he searched for the word here) holiday. And winter is my favorite season because it’s when it is Christmas.”

Just then B came into the room and I told F to tell daddy what he told me. F repeated himself pretty much word for word until he got to the part about winter. He said, “Winter is my favorite season and spring.” B asked him why he liked spring. F said, “I like spring because it’s when the flowers grow.” And then B started to cry a little and my heart exploded all over the bed.

I’m sure that Iris didn’t mean to completely offend me when she referred, in a comment, to the physical and emotional abuse I suffer at the hands of my three year old, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the comment and feel like I should explain.

I am (was, anyway) a teacher. I worked in some of the most poverty stricken neighborhoods in Philadelphia. I taught children who had seen people killed in front of them. I taught children who came to school reeking of pot and alcohol because their homes reeked of pot and alcohol. I had parent teacher conferences with parents who were visibly intoxicated. My first year of teaching, at 21 years old, I had kindergarten students who had been left back with parents that were younger than I was. In other words, I am no stranger to fucked up kids.

My kid is not fucked up. Yes, he is overly emotional right now, partly because of his age and partly because I am pregnant again. He was a wreck after T was born and even though he probably doesn’t remember it, he understands on some level that his little world is about to be completely disrupted again. On top of that he wants to do things that he is not allowed to do. He does not like limits and boundaries, but he has them, and it makes him angry.

If it were up to him he’d watch a combination of Caillou, Barney, and Teletubbies all day long while playing games on PBS Kids. He’d eat nothing but potato chips and sandwich creme cookies washed down with apple juice and lemonade. I’d read him the same two stories 7000 times in a row while ignoring his brother. He would stand naked in front of the television, peeing wherever he wanted. I would clean up the mess. On occasion he would emerge from his television/video game haze to play at the playground. I would push him in the stroller so he wouldn’t get too tired walking. On the way there we’d stop at Dunkin Donuts and Bohema, the local hippie store he loves to browse in. On the way home we’d stop at the bakery for cookies, the first pizza place for chicken fingers and french fries and the second pizza place for pizza. He would mostly likely eat none of the foods he asked me to purchase, because he actually prefers not to eat because he is too busy. We would also go to the zoo and the children’s museum and the playhouse and every other playground he’s ever seen before returning to his den of irritating children’s programming. And I’d buy him Thomas trains. All of them. Battery powered, wooden, Take-along, the whole line and all of the accessories.

His three year old fantasy is not too far off from his three year old reality. He gets to do all of the things he wants in moderation. He doesn’t watch TV or play video games all day, but he gets to play while his brother naps. He doesn’t get to play at the playground for seven hours straight, but on most days, even when I’m freezing my ass off he gets to play for a little while. I let him eat junk food sometimes after he’s eaten a decent lunch and he gets to drink watered down juice on occasion. We go to the places he likes to visit on a pretty regular basis considering how fucking tired I am all of the time. Sometimes I even buy him donuts or cookies on the way home.

He’s got it pretty good, but he’s not spoiled. He loses toys, television and computer privileges when he doesn’t listen. There are still trains in the basement from the last time he hit his brother with a toy. He knows that screaming gets him nothing and that he has to speak nicely if he wants me to do things for him. But knowing that there are consequences doesn’t ensure good behavior. He is three, almost four and he can’t control himself. He’s overtired and hungry many days because he refuses to go to sleep at a regular hour and doesn’t want to eat. The combination of tired and hungry is more than he can take. He just can’t control his behavior sometimes.

Like last night. Yesterday was a pretty good day. We went to story hour at the library then picked out books and movies and played on the library computers. He ate lunch and drank lemonade, watched Barney while I put his brother down for a nap. Then we read the 7 stories we picked out, some of them twice, and built a giant train set on the floor. He got to watch Dinosaur Train while I cleaned up and prepped some things for dinner, then we played with trains together until his brother woke up. He played some games on PBS Kids then had a snack. He said he wasn’t hungry for dinner yet, even though it was ready for him and went to swim lessons at 6. He got home in a good mood. Then he refused to eat his dinner. I made him eat half. He asked for a bagel and refused to eat it once it was ready. That’s where it all went downhill. For the next two hours everything was a battle. Everything. B took over so I could get T to sleep, but T couldn’t sleep through the screams. F refused to pee and refused to eat and only wanted to wear wet pajamas to bed because he doesn’t like dry pajamas any more. 2 bedtime stories wasn’t good enough he needed 3. Then he wanted the bagel he didn’t like because he was hungry and I just wanted him to shut the fuck up so his brother could sleep. By the time he did quieted down so T could sleep and fell asleep himself I was exhausted. Then he had nightmares all night long, whimpering about pajamas and shouting for us to go away and leave him alone. At one point he had his hands on Boyfiend’s face and was shouting at him to stop touching him. B tried to explain that F was touching him, not the other way around, but how do you argue with a kid in the middle of a nightmare? B went upstairs to sleep. And of course F was overtired this morning from screaming and staying up too late and nightmares, and I am overtired from the screaming and being kicked awake all night. And the cycle continues.

He did not want to go to school today. Well, any day really- he just wants to stay home with me and watch Caillou. Today I asked his teacher, Miss P, how he was doing. I told her about his behavior at home and explained that he doesn’t want to go to school any more. She seemed completely surprised. She told me that he always plays nicely, alone, one-on-one, or in groups. She said he never raises his voice and never misbehaves. She said he’s got a sweet personality and gets along with everyone. The assistant teacher said she’s never had to correct him. Ever. He’s just a sweet kid. Miss P told me that her daughter is having the same problems with her three year old. He’s terrible with her, nasty, but at school or with Miss P he’s helpful. He, like F, has taken to throwing fits, refusing to eat, refusing to sleep and running away.

It was a relief to hear my kid is not the only one who acts that way. I mean, I know my kid is not the only one who acts that way. There is an entire book, Your Three-Year-Old: Friend or Enemy, that explains the behavior and says that the parent is their child’s worthiest adversary. They recommend getting a good babysitter. But still, I don’t really see F’s friends act that way, and the kids at his preschool all seem to be able to leave the playground afterwards without throwing shit fits, so it was really good to hear from his teacher, a woman who has been teaching 3 and 4 year olds for 15 years that F is not the only one, and that he’s a great kid at school.

I feel like I’m just babbling. My point is that my kid doesn’t need a referral. He’s a sweetheart (when he’s not acting like an asshole) and this is just a stage. He will grow out of it. At some point the good days will begin to outnumber the bad days again and chances are that I will then be venting about T or the new baby. The Fiendling is a great kid. I just don’t get to see much of the good stuff these days. He reserves it for everyone else because he knows I will still love him even when he acts out.

Our bedtime experiment results have been mixed. T has adjusted nicely to the new room and likes climbing up on the big double bed to read stories before he goes to sleep for bed or nap. He didn’t nap particularly well most of last week, but I think that’s due mostly to his incoming 2 year molars and a slight cold. When I remembered to dose him with Motrin he slept through the night and took his usual 2-3 hour nap.

F isn’t adjusting. After the first night, when he woke up twice and woke me and his brother in the process, he went right back to sleeping in our bed. Right now this isn’t much of a problem. Except for the sideways sleeping. He likes to sleep sideways right beneath the pillows. Head by me, feet by B. Sometimes he switches and I get stuck with the feet. Most nights B moves him so that his head and feet are where they should be, but he doesn’t like sleeping with blankets and kicks himself out.

Early this morning I awoke to little feet kicking me on the legs and back. F was sideways, and angry. I don’t know what kind of dream he was having or what pissed him off, but his kicks, instead of accidental became shoves and he started yelling, “Go away,” and “leave me alone.” B woke up and went to the bathroom. I tried to calm F and turn him around, but he just got more and more angry and so did I. After a minute he seemed fully awake and aware so I told him that if he wanted to stay in our bed he was going to have to stop yelling at me and kicking. I told him I was going to bring him into the other room to sleep on the couch if he didn’t stop. He responded by throwing his water bottle then ripping a pillow out from under my head and throwing it. I lost my temper, picked him up and carried him into the other room where I dumped him on the couch. He got up and tried to run back into my room. I stopped him and put him back on the couch. He got off and tried to escape again. Same thing. By this point, really just a minute or two after he’d woken up in the first place, I was done.

B came out of the bathroom. I gave him the rundown of the previous minute and told him I was done. I went to the bathroom, then ignored the still angry and fighting Fiendling on my way back to bed. A few minutes later B and F got back into bed. I pretended to be asleep. F told B he wanted some water. His water bottle, which I’d collected from the floor was on my bedside table so I handed it to him. He said thank you then gave me a kiss. We all went back to sleep.

F didn’t wake up for the day until 8.30. I thought about waking him earlier but decided I’d rather have a peaceful hour or so with T. When he woke up he yelled for me. I went in to say good morning and sit with him for a few minutes while he adjusted to being awake. I asked if he remembered waking up in the night. He told me no. I reminded him of the events of the night before, glossing over the parts where he kicked me, threw his water, stole my pillow and got forcefully ejected from bed for a few minutes. He didn’t remember any of it.

I don’t know how I’m going to get my bed back before this baby comes. There’s no way I’m going to be able to share a bed with Boyfiend and the Fiendling and nurse a baby on and off all night. Even if I manage to stay awake for each nursing session and put the baby back in the pack n play, it’s still going to be a challenge.

Some (asshole) commenter, joe, wrote that he(she?) was just reading to see how many times I call my kid an asshole. This got me thinking. Is it wrong to express my frustration with my child by calling him an asshole? Should I instead smile sweetly on the internet and use words that aren’t quite so insulting? Out of curiosity, just to see how bad of a mother I am, I did a search for the word on my blog. In the past year (I looked, but there was no incidence of the word asshole when referring to my child before 1/09) I’ve directly called him an asshole two times. I did describe three-year-olds as assholes, so I’ll take a hit and say three times. And I almost entitled a post Asshole when F was potty training and refused to pee in the potty, but I reconsidered and did not. But I’ll count that and say four. Four times too many?

Right now F is clearly going through a rough time emotionally. I would like to be sympathetic, but it’s difficult when he spends the majority of his awake time arguing with me. When he is visibly sad or upset it’s easier to be understanding. But when he’s screaming at me, raising his hand as though to hit me, yelling no at everything I say, hitting his brother, stealing his brother’s toys, peeing on the rug just to spite me, running away from me so that I have to chase him in public places, stomping and screaming, I just want to throttle him, not hold or comfort him. I have not throttled him yet. In my own delicate emotional state I think I should get a medal for that.

So what other words besides asshole can I use? Lets see. He is generally sweet to everyone else, but with the people who live in this house, the people who love him most of all, he is emotional, volatile, argumentative, stubborn, miserable, cranky, fussy, mean, cruel, violent, temperamental, grouchy, grumpy, irrational, illogical, defiant. That’s all I can up with without consulting a thesaurus. Perhaps if other descriptors or adjectives come to mind I’ll update the list. But until then, when I’m frustrated I think it may be easier just to use the word asshole. Unfortunately, if you’re keeping count at home, I don’t think you’ll read it enough to make it a drinking game.

First, I’d like to thank you for indulging me on my recent comment whore post. It’s nice to know my lack of posting/lack of anything funny or interesting to write about hasn’t scared everyone off.

Second, my friend/cousin’s wife just bought her daughter a big girl bed and asked us to take the crib off out of their house right now thank you very much. Since I have no interest in moving a kid who sleeps well in a crib out of one, and we will in the next 6 months need another crib, we were happy to oblige. We went over yesterday and the kids played while B dismantled their crib and loaded it in our car and I went through her maternity clothes, finding some things I’d been missing. I also scored a bunch of soft, cuddly PBK crib sheets, a snuggle nest and some girlish bedding they forced upon us in the hopes that we’ll have a girl, keep it for while and they can unload all of the rest of their girly baby stuff on us.

We got home and started to rearrange the upstairs. By we I mean Boyfiend. I hung out with my friend and her super cute, squishy baby who has not yet learned about free will, disobedience, and hair pulling. B dismantled the double bed in the guest room and F’s twin bed and switched them. We then (and by we I mean we) somehow maneuvered the twin sleeper sofa from F’s room into the guest room. Today we set up the crib in F’s room and rearranged the furniture to accommodate the double bed, crib, train table, bureau and bookshelf.

F has been saying that he only likes to sleep in big beds, so hopefully the larger bed will be incentive for him to sleep in his own goddamn room. He’s also suggested that he’d like to share a room with his brother, so again, we’re hoping. The other room now has a twin bed and the twin sleeper in it so we can always move the boys in there if we do ever actually have a guest that requires a double bed.

I am fearful, but tonight I’m going to put both of the boys to bed up there together. The odds are that F will end up in our bed 5 minutes later. Either that or he’ll keep the poor, tired baby awake. The timing is pretty much shit since T is getting his two year molars and I am cranky and pregnant, but there’s no time like the present. The worst that can happen is that we give it a couple of weeks and it doesn’t work. T will be comfortably sleeping upstairs alone and we’ll still be sleeping with a pain in the ass preschooler for the rest of our lives, ensuring that this baby-to-be is our last without the need for surgical interventions.

I just lost my shit at the local chain bookstore. We go there for the train table. (because the TWO at our house aren’t good enough) The boys were playing nicely until two other boys showed up. F started in with his bossy, you’re playing with them all wrong ways. I told him that if he didn’t play nicely we were going to have to leave, a threat I’ve followed through on at least twice before. One of the other boys put Terence the tractor on the tracks instead of on the road. F screamed, and snatched it out of his hand. I told him to give it back immediately or we were leaving. He brought the train up over his head. I told him not to, but it was too late. He threw the train back on the table where it bounced up and hit the other kid in the forehead.

F knew immediately what he’d done and said sorry but it was too late. The kid started to cry and the mother understandably started to freak out.  I apologized like a babbling idiot and asked if the boy was okay. I grabbed F and told him we were leaving and to say he was sorry to the little boy. He burst into tears and started running. I was at a complete loss and just let him go while I got my coat on and T’s.  The other mother and her friend brought their kids over to the cafe to get ice for the head wound. I apologized again, but I don’t think she cared.  She was pissed, and rightfully so. This all took place in about a minute.

F showed up, peeking around the corner and I told him we were leaving. He cried no, he wanted to stay so I very calmly took him by the shoulders, got down so I could look him in the eye, and told him that we had to go because he hadn’t played nicely. He had gotten angry, thrown a toy and it had hurt another kid. The little fucker corrected me and told me that he hadnt thrown a toy. I nearly fucking killed him until I realized that the know it all had just corrected me because Terence is a tractor, not a toy. I took a deep breath and told him that I knew that he hadn’t meant to hit the boy,  but he threw Terence and the boy got hurt.  I asked why it’s not safe to throw trains and he told me because someone could get hurt. Still horrified, but somewhat appeased by his answer I got his coat on and told him to put his scarf, which he didn’t want to wear, into the bag.

A woman who I guess was looking at books in the section came over and said, “You look like you need a hug. I’ve been there.” She leaned down, hugged me, and walked away and I promptly burst into tears. I tried to keep it under control, but just them a fucking store manager came over with a clipboard and incident report to fill out. I could barely speak through my choking sobs. She told me that no one was in trouble, that she just needed a record of the incident and tried to get me to get it together so she could fill out the paperwork, but I was just a mess. She told me the woman called her pediatrician (what the fuck, the kid wasn’t bleeding, it was a bump from a toy train, excuse me tractor)and did I need her to call anyone for me.

I managed to get through the paper with her, why she wouldn’t just let me write my own fucking report I don’t know, and she left and I tried really hard to stop crying. Meanwhile the boys were still playing with the trains, well T was and F kept going from the chair over to the train table and I kept  sitting him back down in the chair. After 15 minutes or so I got it together, picked up my bag and the baby, and told F we were leaving.

Of course the little shit said no and sat on the floor in front of a toy display and I had to repeat myself three times before he got up. He followed me, but slowly, and we made it to the front of the store where he decided he needed a goddamn cookie (which admittedly, he’d been promised hours earlier before he wacked a kid in the head with a tractor). I said no and he followed me to the doors of the store, but wouldn’t go any further. I stood there for a few minutes with him before I gave up and left him there so I could put the baby and the bag in the car and go back from him. I was parked right in front of the store so I could see him through the doors, small and sad. I put the baby in the car, went back and grabbed the Fiendling who then inappropriately whined for candy. I screamed at him and buckled both of the kids in their seats and sobbed in the drivers seat for 10 minutes before I felt okay to drive.

I drove home crying while F screamed that he wanted to listen to Jack Johnson and that he needed to go back to the store to buy something. He needed to buy something. The little fucking ingrate who just whacked a kid in the head with a toy tractor was outraged that I wouldn’t buy him something. I blame Christmas for his complete loss of manners and bad parenting mixed with three year old bullshit for the rest of his inexcusable behaviors.

Things didn’t get better once we were home. He kept pushing my buttons and ignoring my pleas to stop talking. There was a lot of yelling on my part. Raging lunatic yelling. The poor baby just stared and quietly ate his lunch.  I put the baby down for a nap and haven’t really stopped crying yet. F wisely decided to leave me alone and is watching TV.

I know that the Fiendling did not mean to hurt the kid. It wasn’t even the kid he was annoyed with. He just threw the toy on the table and it bounced up and hit the kid on the head. It wasn’t even very hard. And I hate to be annoyed with the mother for overreacting, but I am. When he wasn’t quite 2 years old, F was hit in the head with a train by a kid who picked up the train and intentionally smacked him right on the head. I’m sure it hurt- F was bald, you could see the bruise. But I didn’t call for a fucking incident report. Come to think of it, not long before the two boys showed up at the table, a little girl who is probably the same age as T snatched a train out of his hand and whacked him with it. The mother apologized and took her to read some stories.  Then a minute or two later the girl came back and did it again.  I didn’t freak out. I wasn’t even annoyed. I just picked him up and he went back to playing.

I’m getting off topic. I’m completely mortified. I hate this.

I know I’ve mentioned that for the past several months the Fiendling has been sneaking into bed with us in the middle of the night. He’s always been a shitty sleeper and it’s always been problematic, but up until he started school (I can only assume that was the trigger) he’d been okay once he was asleep. It was the going to sleep part that was the problem. Once school started he’d mostly go to sleep fine, but he’d wake up, climb in and there he’d be in the morning.

It got progressively worse. He went from going to sleep in his room, to not wanting to sleep in there at all. We tried a sleeping bag on the floor of our room and hyped it up as a fun thing to do, but the novelty wore off after a few hours and he’d still end up in our bed.  For a while we’d try to get him back in the sleeping bag, but his whole body would go stiff, and like a zombie he’d just climb back into our bed repeatedly, asleep the whole time.

We’d have conversations about how to get rid of him and the various approaches to getting him back into his room. But F has always had a mind of his own. That Supernanny shit doesn’t work on him. He’s too stubborn, too strong. Neither of us has the energy to fight with him for hours every night. And it would take hours.  Every night. For God knows how long. I figure it’s just easier to wait for this stage to pass. The stages always pass. And when he’s ready to make a change it actually sticks for a while, as opposed to when we inflict the change upon him and it lasts for a night.

The waking up and sneaking into bed I decided to be okay with. But then came the refusing to go to sleep anywhere but our bed. “I just want to sleep in your big bed. I don’t like my small bed.” Or, “I don’t like being all alone in my room I need to sleep in your big bed with you.”  We tried to let him sleep in his brother’s room to see if that would help, but he just woke his brother up, so that was out of the question. For days we’d argue with him and think we’d won and that he was going to sleep either in his room or in the sleeping bag, but each night when we’d go in our room, there he’d be. Right smack in the middle of our bed.

A few nights ago he was in his pajamas, teeth brushed, stories read, ready for bed. We were discussing where he’d start the night- in his room or on our floor. He looked up at us,  his eyes welling with tears, and said in the sweetest, quietest, saddest little voice, “I just want to sleep with my parents.” And that was it. Done. The kid is obviously going through something.  I don’t like it. And I can’t wait until this stage passes. But until it does, fuck, he just wants to sleep with his parents. How can I argue with that?

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.