A Little Early

Alex has started something new. A very bad something new. A makes me want to pull my hair out something new.

He screams and cries when I take something away from him. Close the door so he can't get out into the mud room, which is full of multiple large and sharp objects just waiting to fall on a baby's head, and watch out! He will sit on his butt right there next to the door and scream. Take away the dog dishes when he is trying to play in the dog's water...flailing arms while screaming and crying. I was really hoping the terrible 2's would skip our family. Ha! Those stupid terrible 2's not only didn't skip us, they showed up 12 months early. I hate them.

This past weekend was tough. Alex was...challenging. I am pretty sure he is working on another tooth, so I tried to cut him some slack, but good gravy. We were out of town visiting with Travis's family for the weekend. And Alex was a Whiney McWhinerston the whole weekend. He didn't want to do anything for more than .2 minutes. He didn't want to be held, but he didn't want to be put down. Whine Whine Whine Whining. But he can't talk yet to tell me what is wrong. At least not with words I can understand. So he just makes this noise. This horrible noise. It sounds like a cow with its batteries running low. It makes me insane.

So far these are the things I have come up with to combat this lovely behavior. When he is upset that he can't have or do something, I let him cry and try to distract him with something he can have. When he whines, I very maturely...totally just imitate and mock him. I honestly don't know what else to do. Not that the imitating does any good to stop him. It does kinda make me feel better though, so it does have some purpose.

Yesterday morning I could feel myself quickly approaching that dreaded point where I was going to lose it. Travis was at work and it was too early to wake anybody else up. So over the river and through the woods to Grandma and Grandpa's house we went. I just knew I needed to be home. And I needed some extra hands to help me deal with the whining, temper tantrum throwing beast I used to call my baby.

I don't know if he could tell I was more relaxed when we arrived, or if it was the pool and never ending attention when we got there, but he was all of a sudden pretty much back to normal. Playing, "talking", giggling, crawling everywhere he could fit. There were still a couple minor melt downs when he wasn't allowed to play in the refrigerator, but otherwise he was back to being a sweet baby.

And then last night before I put him down, he really iced the kissing up to mommy cake. He finished his bottle, twisted and turned and crawled until he was laying against me with his head resting on my shoulder. And then he just laid there quietly telling me a story, of which I couldn't understand a single word. I didn't want that story to ever ever end.