Thorns
Ethan screamed. For about ten minutes while Diana went outside to water the plant, Ethan demanded to water the plants with her. It was his bedtime, and I made it clear that he needed to get ready for bed. My words meant nothing to him. As he leaned on the baby gate at the top of the stairs, he screamed how he wanted to go outside and water the plants, over and over and over. Could I have relented and let him go outside and join Diana? Yes, but I felt it was important to hold firm and have him not dictate his life through throwing a tantrum.
It not fun to hear your child scream, no matter what the context. Even if you are 100% sure it’s a tantrum and you know intellectually it’s the right decision to let your child scream it out, it still hurts. The reptilian part of my brain still feels stress whenever I hear any of my children cry or scream and it’s a struggle to not give in. Sometimes doing what is right for your child feel horrible.
Trying to cook dinner with a baby with new found scooting abilities is challenge. Lucas is moving now. I’m so happy that he’s doing so well, at the same time, part of me wishes he would just cool it. He doesn’t move quickly yet, but it’s unpredictable. I’m not sure how he starts in the middle of the living room and ends up half-way underneath the couch.
Combined with getting dinner started late, getting ready for this meal was very stressful. There’s an art to cooking with little children around, and while I got it done, it was a mess. As much as I love the art of cooking, I don’t always actually love cooking, and today it was not fun.
Roses
It blows my mind that Ollie can read a book. Even though the book he was reading to me today had a part that was unfortunately racist, it was so wonderful to witness him exercise the power of transforming words into thought. Ollie has always had good reading comprehension, and what impresses me the most right now is his fluency. Ollie doesn’t love reading as much as other activities, and we’ll keep working on that.
Ethan is so much fun to play with. He just wants attention, and I feel the times when is most toddler are times when he’s not getting the attention, he feels he needs. We had a moment this morning when we were playing Duplos together and it was really wonderful to see how creative he was an persistent in trying to make the blocks do what he wanted them to do.
All of my boys have beautiful smiles but there’s something different about when Lucas smiles. Since he doesn’t talk yet, his facial expressions take on more importance in his communication. Almost all of the time when I look at him, he smiles at me, sometimes when I smile first and other times it happens before I smile.
It’s the most amazing thing to see him smile. It really does light up my life.
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