Is it a second-pregnancy thing, simply that the sheen of newness is not there?  That I’ve been down this road before?  The fact that having an additional child, while a big deal, is not the earth-shattering change that the first is, when you go from being a Non-Parent to a Parent?

Is it because this was, at least to the outside world, less anticipated than the first time?  I mean, the first time around, you could practically have set a clock to it.  We made the announcement after having been married a little more than two years.  Clearly, people were watching to see if I was drinking or if I looked a bit peaky.  This time, well, almost no one knew it was coming.  We already had two kids, a boy and a girl.  People occasionally asked if we were thinking about more, but not with the intensity that they would if we only had one child.  And the response was always the same – probably not.  (More on how that changed in another post, I promise.)

I felt the strangest sense of… I don’t know… embarrassment? guilt? apology? when I told people.  It was like, I wanted to tell good friends so they wouldn’t be caught off guard when they suddenly saw an enormous belly or a picture of a newborn on Facebook.  But I felt weirdly compelled to downplay the announcement, wanting to be clear that I was happy but not trying to make a Big Honking Deal about the whole thing.

But, of course, it IS a big deal.  It’s a new person! It’s exciting! It’s cause for celebration!  I know I give a good shriek and a hearty “hooray” whenever a friend tells me they’re pregnant, why would I expect any different?  And, as you guys demonstrated yesterday, the vast majority of reactions were excited and happy and congratulatory, and I thank everyone for that.  But before I had you all to rally around me, I will say that I had a few initially lukewarm reactions that really gave me pause.  “Was it planned?”  “Are you happy about it?”  “Oh, good for you.”  I don’t know.  Maybe it’s because, as in the case of my mom, she was so surprised that she was nearly speechless and hardly knew what to say.  But anyways, a couple of the first calls were a little underwhelming.

For those who asked, we have not yet told the kids, but plan on doing so soon.  M and I have agreed not to make a big production out of it.  We’ll simply sit down, say we have some exciting news about a baby growing in mommy’s belly, and more or less leave it at that until they ask questions.  Especially since they’re about to start preschool and have plenty of other things going on in their lives, I don’t want to put any undue emphasis on this announcement, especially since the actual impact on their lives is so far away.  It will become a Big Honking Deal in its own time, no need to set it up too big for now.

So, there we are.  The cat is out of the bag, and the anticipation was worse (as usual) than reality.  You guys are awesome, I’m psyched, and I’m glad I don’t have to make any more obscure excuses for going to bed at 8:30pm (or why my pants are being buttoned with a rubber band).

Wow, really? The last time I mused randomly on having more kids was the better part of a year ago?  I mean, I mentioned it briefly after I met my nephew in January, but that’s it. Huh.

Frankly, there wasn’t anything new to say.  I want to, I don’t want to, I want to, I don’t want to.  M doesn’t want to.  Oh look, M still doesn’t want to. Fancy that.  Same old, same old. Nothing worth writing about and re-hashing, once again.

I’ve decided it’s time to close this topic.  Several months ago, now, I pretty much resigned myself to being all done. I was bummed at the time, but really, is it such a sad thing? I have two kids who, in spite of recent rough times, are completely awesome. Healthy. Smart. Sweet. Practically perfect in every way. A boy and a girl, even, in a nice neat package. What else do I need?

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

And then, something funny happened.

. . .

. . .

M changed his mind.

. . .

. . .

Baby Tres is on his or her way. Early March, 2011.

SURPRISE!

Before I start a-rambling on all of the things I’ve kept bottled up these last 12 weeks, I’m opening it up to questions from the peanut gallery. Anything you want to ask? I’ll happily tell whatever parts of the story you want to hear in future posts.

In the meantime, I’m going to go take another nap.

Enter this weekend.

My in-laws are around.  They were insistent that they take the kids for the weekend so M and I could do something fun.

I was weirdly uneasy about it.  Not sure exactly why, or if any reasons I could come up with were at all rational (worried about the driving, in particular).  But eventually we came up with a plan we agreed on: my in-laws would take the kids up to a friend’s lake house in New Hampshire for the weekend.  There was talk of them staying here while M and I went somewhere, but I’m all traveled out. I just wanted peace and quiet in my own house.

The packing up to go on Friday afternoon was a little rough.  Daniel was noticeably anxious, clinging to a stuffed turtle when he normally has almost zero attachment to such things.  Both kids wailed as I moved the carseats into their grandparents’ car.  “I want you to come with us” was the cry.  I gave hugs and reassured them, but mostly tried to keep moving and not look at them too much, so I wouldn’t start crying, too.  They calmed down once they were in the car and knew they were hitting the McDonald’s drive-thru once they got on the road.

I went inside and cried.  I tried to take a nap, but couldn’t.  I sat like a lump, aimless, clueless what to do with my freedom.  I cried a few more times, maybe because I don’t usually have the physical or emotional space to cry these days.  M got home early.  We went out for sushi.  Came home, passed out.

Saturday came.  I woke up on my own terms. I went to the gym without needing childcare. I stopped at Starbucks without ordering two chocolate milks.  I sewed and listened to NPR and let M sleep until noon.

We purged the playroom of outdated (or particularly annoying) toys.  We got two Bagsters, filled them both to the brim, and our garage went from “you can’t even walk in here” to “hey, I bet a car would actually fit in here!”  Exciting stuff, I know.  But the kind of thing we never seem to get around to doing when the kids are around.

We went out for sushi a second night in a row.  Hell yeah.

Reports from New Hampshire were nothing short of glowing.  Everyone slept well. Almost no tears (I mean, come on, they’re still three). Storyland. Swimming in the lake. Mickey Mouse-shaped pancakes for breakfast.

Alright. I admit it. We should REALLY do this more often.

And now, it’s 4:15 on Sunday afternoon.  The kids are on their way home, and I’m glad.

A big thanks to Grandma and Papi.  We needed that.

Daniel and I had a pretty horrendous July.  It persisted straight through our two weeks in Chicago and Wisconsin, placing it easily in the top two most challenging trips we’ve taken. He was a pill pretty much every day.  He was defiant, he was rude.  He treated every suggestion of a potty break as a personal affront, and had more poop accidents than I care to remember.  He napped well under 50% of the time. And though I had family around, I was without M, so ultimately EVERYTHING came down to me. He had his lovely moments too, of course, but there were so many struggles in every day, that’s the overriding memory for me. To call it exhausting and infuriating would be an understatement.

All the while, Rebecca did her very best to compensate for her brother’s behavior.  Sunshine and light. Extra easy-going. Sometimes she’d even be kind enough to point it out for me, in case I didn’t notice.  “Mommy, I’m doing good listening!”

But I knew the day would eventually come.  Daniel would, someday, come down from this peak of intensity.  Which is not to say he would fundamentally change his personality, just tone down the extremes a notch or two (or fifteen).  And so he did, almost immediately after his birthday.  Suddenly we had several good days in a row. Less of the life-and-death struggle that marked every naptime for the previous six weeks. Dramatically fewer random acts of defiance. Cooperation and manners. Much improvement in attitude and performance in potty training.  General sweetness and snuggles and smooches.  Whew.

Naturally, that means it’s Rebecca’s turn to lose her mind.

My get-along girl is now that much bossier, that much more aggressive.  She’s sneaky and sassy.  She has thrown a few epic tantrums, the likes of which we haven’t seen from her in quite some time.  She’s clingier, she’s whinier.  She lost her mind when the (familiar and beloved) babysitter came so M and I could go to a wedding.  I’ve even noticed her doing a very three-and-a-half thing that I read about in Your Three-Year-Old: a sudden drop in confidence in her physical abilities.  Some of it is amusingly dramatic – she collapses on a heap in the floor and is suddenly incapable of standing back up.  The trials and tribulations of putting on her shoes can send her to the pit of despair.  And while she used to scurry up the climbing wall at our favorite indoor playspace in no time flat, she now gets three steps up and then comes back down.

Without the live-in experiment of twins, as well as reading up on this age and talking to those who have gone before me, I’m not sure I would realize both of these sets of behaviors were coming from the same developmental place.  Daniel’s defiance does not have a direct equivalent in Rebecca’s behaviors, they express this unsettled age in different ways.

This will pass, it always does. It will come again, too. If I’ve learned anything in my last three years of parenting, it’s that all the phases are temporary.  Enjoy the good ones while you can, put your head down and get through the tough ones.  They all pass.

My kids are starting preschool in less than a month.

The envelope I’d been waiting for showed up last Thursday.  A welcome letter. Details on start dates and phase-ins. 16 pages of emergency contacts, vaccination records, parental consent, and even a questionnaire about when they started sitting and crawling and walking and what their favorite foods are. Class lists with the names of kids I’ve never met before, and a quick count that shows the rooms to be more than 50% boys.

As a Montessori school, they’re really big on independence. And while I have long thought of my kids as fairly independent children, I’m suddenly realizing the things we need to work on them being able to do by themselves.  They’re mostly able to handle the potty by themselves, but seem to still want me to be a big part of the process. Still, without me there, I think they’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly.

My bigger concern, actually, is the fact that they specify wanting the kids to be able to dress themselves. I know it’s developmentally appropriate, but it’s something my kids have never shown any interest in doing. I know, right? I don’t have that story of finding my 18-month-olds stripping all of their clothes off, nor do I find them post-nap wearing an odd assortment of pajamas, skirts, and socks on their hands.  Just not my kids’ thing.  So, now I’ve got four weeks to make progress on the self-dressing front. They’re looking at me like I’m nuts when I ask them to try putting their underwear on by themselves.

In the meantime, there are labels to affix to all of their shoes and shirts and jeans, new backpacks on their way, and I have to find a pair of non-character-branded slippers for them to wear in class.  We need to tweak our wake-up time and morning routine in the hopes of making it on time for school at 8:30, and maybe buy one more carseat so Daddy can handle drop-off sometimes.

Oh, and I need to come to terms with the fact that, after doing every single activity by my kids’ side for every single day of the last three years, they’re now going to have five mornings a week of learning and playing and doing all kinds of things without me.

You’ll understand if I’d rather focus on finding the right slippers than dealing with that particular reality.

I absolutely agree with Aimee’s assessment, BlogHer is what you make of it.  Everyone’s experience of the weekend in New York was a little, or a lot, different.  Some people went to every single session, some went to none at all.  Some spent hours on the Expo floor, some skipped it entirely.  And on and on.

I had my own set of hopes and expectations, that were probably somewhat different from many others.  I wasn’t there to actively network and promote my blog in the hopes of amazing new opportunities and a dramatic spike in traffic.  I’ll write more on that in another post, but I am not currently and do not wish to become a “professional” blogger.  And I’m happy with that.  Oh yes, I made business cards and I gave them to people.  I absolutely welcome new readers and new friends, and even fun opportunities when they arise.  But that wasn’t my overarching goal when I got on the train Thursday afternoon.

I went because I thought it sounded like a whole lot of fun.  I went because I didn’t want to read about it and be jealous because I didn’t go for another year.  I went because a weekend in New York without any kids was just what the doctor ordered.

I enjoyed some sessions more than others, but am glad that they’re all available as liveblog entries and (if not now, soon) podcasts, so I didn’t really miss any of them.  While I have a hard time putting into words exactly what I learned and took away from the experience, I can certainly say I got a lot out of it, even if a lot of it was self-reflection.  But there’s really something about being in a space full of people who blog, on such an amazing range of topics with such completely different approaches, that’s pretty powerful.

I got over any awkward hesitation and made it a point to introduce myself to the women behind some of my favorite, what I would call “A-list”, blogs: Sarah and the Goon Squad, Mom 101, Amalah, and many more.  I had read each of them, in turn, write something along the lines of “please please please just say hello,” and so I did.  And they were all nothing short of lovely.  I saw Aimee in one of the photography sessions and recognized her instantly, and ran over to give her a hug, finally meeting in person someone I’ve been commenting back and forth with for years.

I had awesome roommates in Caro, Kami, and Amber.  I got to spend lots of quality time with Charlene and Cindy.

I shook my booty on the dance floor with Cheryl.  (Seriously, if you’re considering going to BlogHer, you should do it just so you can hit up Sparklecorn).

I shook my booty on the Expo Floor with Christina, Liz, and Kristin. (God help me, there’s video.  I’m the short, fat one who almost won.)

I went to a party that had firefighters as eye candy, and admit to some confusion as to the social expectations.  Were there supposed to be dollar bills involved?

I saw the Sun from the Jimmy Dean commercials, as well as Elmo, the Pillsbury Dough Boy, and some possessed rabbit from a video game.

I witnessed and tasted something made by Charm City Cakes.

I saw the Pioneer Woman.

I brought home an extra suitcase full of free stuff, mostly toys for my kids.

It was exhausting, it was fun.  It was imperfect, but it ran amazingly smoothly.  I had substantial anxiety before I went, but felt surprisingly at ease once I got there. I felt just as welcome as anyone else. I am absolutely glad that I went, it was worth the time, energy, and money.

Will I go back, year after year? Well, probably not. I can say with almost 100% certainty that I will not be going to San Diego for BlogHer ’11, awesome though it sounds.  If, another year, it wasn’t on the opposite side of the continent and the timing worked out? Yeah, quite possibly.

And if you’re thinking about making the trip? I say go for it. Have a blast, introduce yourself to your favorite bloggers (in a friendly, non-crazy way), chat with people you’ve never met, and shake your booty whenever the opportunity presents itself.  You won’t regret it.

Yes. Today, you are Three.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that this age is presenting some significant challenges.  I know we may be in for a roller coaster of a year.  But I maintain the same answer I always give when people ask me if parenting has gotten “easier.”  Hard is always hard.  But the good parts get better.

The year we’ve just finished has come with changes both explosive and subtle.  Both kids’ command of language is wonderful, but it’s the thoughts that you hear behind the words that completely blow my mind.  They explain things to me and to each other. They remember details I would have never imagined.  They ask questions and find connections. To say they’re little sponges is cliché, but still true.

The year ahead is going to be a big one. In barely a month, they will be off to school, five mornings a week. I can’t begin to sum up the enormity of this transition.  I’m anxious about it, and I’ll certainly cry. But I’m so excited (for me, as well as for them). I think the program we’re sending them to is great, and I can barely begin to imagine the things they’ll learn and the fun they’ll have.  The fact that they’ll be in different classrooms is bittersweet.  I know they’ll do great, and I think it’s the right choice for our kids, but it’s still a sort of sad, wistful transition.

_ _ _ _ _

Daniel, you and I are having a rough go of it right now, I know.  I’m trying to be more patient, trying to stop and listen to the words I use with you and think about the messages I’m sending you.  I’m trying to give you warnings before we make a transition, and trying to give you the direct attention you so badly want.

But you amaze me. Your imagination knows no limit, and you tell elaborate stories of what type of game we’re playing.  Often an interweaving of various TV show plotlines, as well as actual current events in your life (we “drive to the airport” a lot).  You are not known for brevity of speech. If you’re telling someone a story, you give them the whole shebang.  No skimping on the details.  You notice everything, and you must touch it all, see how it works, see what happens if you poke it.  It drives me nuts because it takes you 15 minutes to retrieve a pair of shoes from the other room.  But the fact is that you are unendingly curious.  You haven’t yet started with “why,” but you ask every other question under the sun, and are really taking in the answers.  And if you really want to know, you will not be distracted. Finish the topic to your satisfaction, or there will be hell to pay.

You have gotten a lot more physically daring in the last year, even the last few months.  You want to hang on the monkey bars, you want to jump off of everything.  When you’re in the mood, you love swimming. At the lake in Wisconsin last week, we took the pontoon boat to the middle of the lake, and in your trusty lifejacket, there you were. Swimming in the middle of the lake.  You even went sailing with Grandma, and I had to talk you out of waterskiing by saying you needed to be able to put your head under water first (which still gets a big “no”).  You have shown a sudden interest in lots of different sports, which fascinates your totally un-athletic parents. You’re not always the most coordinated, but you are desperate to give it a try yourself and figure out exactly how it works. Aunt Jamie got you to hit a badminton birdie with a racket a few times, and you could not have had a bigger grin on your face.

My sweet boy, you are so sensitive. Defiant and contrary? Yes.  But when you have a meltdown over this thing or that, the first thing you always say is, “I’m so sad!”  So you always have been, even since you were an infant. When you got worked up, it always sounded more upset and sad than angry.  I feel like you have this little emotional angel and devil on each shoulder, and genuinely don’t know which one to listen to sometimes.  The flip side, thankfully, is that you can be oh so sweet.  Cuddly and snuggly, hilarious and engaging and sociable and charming.  We’re going to have our ups and downs, this year and the rest of them, but I know you’re such a good person at heart, you’ll be just fine in the end.

_ _ _ _ _

Rebecca, you fool people.  You are generally more easygoing than your brother, much less likely to stare me down and say “no” when I ask you to do something.  You are becoming quite girly, and can be a little shy when you meet people.

And yet…

Get closer and anyone knows you are not to be trifled with.  You are often quieter than your brother, but much more calculating.  Last week I watched you trick your brother with one bogus “trade” after another to get the thing you wanted, be it his flashlight, his sunglasses, or some other trinket you wanted to get your hands on.  There was no grabbing, no outward aggression.  Just a sweet, “hey Daniel, do you want to try my lollipop?”  Nevermind the fact that yours was almost completely gone and he had just started his, which you were going to “trade” with him. You knew exactly what you were doing.  Your emotional intelligence, whether used for good or evil, is amazing.  You know when to back off.  You know how to compensate for your brother’s meltdowns, both to spare me the exhaustion and to paint yourself in a positive light. If M or I start to get cross with you, you immediately come in for a hug and a kiss.  And it works better than we’d like to admit.  You are just as intellectually curious and clever as I just described your brother, but your social and emotional prowess is another thing, entirely.

I call you “little mama.”  You are sweet and nurturing.  You pat your brother on the head when he seems like he needs some comfort, even if he swats your hand away.  You take care of your baby dolls.  You adore animals, especially dogs of all shapes and sizes, and give them hugs and kisses several times a day.  You are also a rule follower, and more to the point, a rule enforcer.  I hear you repeating my mom-phrases, and I’m only surprised that you don’t count your brother more often and attempt to put him into time out.  You are bossy as all get out.  You love to be in charge.  You have a clear sense of the way things ought to be, and you do your best to make it so.

Your size and your first impression make people think you’re delicate, but in fact you can actually be pretty physically assertive and frankly can be just as wild as anyone else.  You’re the one who knocks down your brother and sits on him, mostly as a game that has the two of you in hysterics, telling each other “let’s do it again!.” In some ways you are becoming a little more wary and a little less physically daring than you used to be, and you’re not as much of a fan of the water as your brother (unless it’s a nice quiet pool and you can just float to your heart’s content).  But you love to run and run and run and jump and spin and fall and run some more, just as much as you seem to enjoy sitting quietly with a book.

You are, by and large, easy to parent.  You ask to go upstairs for nap.  You listen well, and on the occasion that you don’t, it seldom takes more than one reminder.  You might not be as outgoing as your brother, but you love one-on-one interactions with family and have become less reserved with strangers.  You have your daddy completely wrapped around your finger.  You are so loving, so sweet.  You give spectacular hugs, kisses, and nuzzles.  I strongly suspect you are going to give me a run for my money in the middle school years, but either way I just love to watch the way you work.

_ _ _ _ _

We’ve got a heck of a year ahead.  I’m both bracing myself for it, and really excited for it.  As hard as it is and will be, I still wouldn’t trade this age for any of the previous ones.

Happy Birthday, kiddos.

But in personality, I think she’s an awful lot like me as a kid.

There’s the funny similarities, like the fact that all she wants to do in the water is float. Or that she can often be found spinning in a circle and singing to herself.  She seems to be like me from a parenting perspective, too - pretty easy, big into rules, kind of sensitive to perceived slights or sadness.

We’re at the beginning of our annual Midwestern pilgrimage right now. Hauling our stuff all over Illinois and Wisconsin to visit various family members. This weekend was the yearly family reunion for my dad’s side, and it was tons of fun as always.  A pool, lots of young kids, silly games, junk food at every turn. Good times. Unfortunately, M had to stay home since he really didn’t have enough vacation days to join us.

Yesterday, in the middle of the Reunion Insanity, Rebecca woke up from her nap crying hysterically.  I asked what was wrong, and she choked out, “I miss my daddy!” Oh, the heartbreaking wails.  Eventually she calmed down enough that we could call M and she could talk to him.  And that was when I heard the most striking echo of myself as a kid, through buckets of tears and loud sobs and a thick throat:

“I just want to go home.”

Oh, how many times I said that as a child.  I was an intense homebody. My mom would drop me off to play at a friend’s house, and the other mother would call an hour later, saying I was ready to be picked up.  The first week of first grade was constant tears.  My first time away at camp, age 10, was an epic disaster of daily letters, begging to come home.  Even my freshman year of college, I racked up enormous phone bills (OK, much of which was to my boyfriend at the time), and almost didn’t go back after Fall and Winter breaks. I transferred at the end of the year, and ended up going to school two miles from home.  The fact that I have now lived a full time zone away for more than 10 years is nothing short of a miracle, but I think even that is nearing its end.

So, when I heard Rebecca all but begging her Daddy to let her go home (again today), my heart broke. Not just because we’ll be here for almost two more weeks and I certainly want her to have a good time, but because I remembered so clearly what that felt like. That intense homesickness, that desperate need to be near the things and the people that I missed.

I feel badly that I’ve passed that trait on to my child.  It’s hard to feel that sad, and it took away from my ability to enjoy things like Girl Scout camp, and for sure kept me from making a real attempt to take advantage of my first year of college (even though transferring was ultimately the best decision and my second school was a perfect fit).

Thankfully, I know it gets better. I was able to go away to camp a few years later and I liked it. I traveled to Europe and had a great time. I moved to Boston and fell in love and started a family.

And, hey, I’m 31 years old and want to live closer to my mommy. So maybe that’s not all bad.

But in the meantime, I will try to be patient with her sadness and remember that feeling in the pit of my stomach, of just wishing I could be back home.  I will try to help her enjoy the times when we’re away, and not just count down the days until we go back.  And I’ll make sure she gets to talk to Daddy every single night.

I have been very lucky in the sense that neither of my kids have ever struggled with language.  They were both always comfortably in the average range for their age, and sometimes seemingly well above average.  They have good vocabularies and are generally very easy for most people to understand when they speak.  Their pronunciation has improved as they’ve gotten older, with no intervention from us. While I do make it a point to pronounce words correctly when I talk to them or repeat back what they’ve said, I don’t do it in a pointed, correcting kind of way.  I just talk. That’s it.

They have also shown an interest in trying new words just for the fun of it, and both are consciously trying to pronounce “L” and “TH” correctly, which is pretty neat to watch.

In the meantime, they have a few consistent mispronunciations that I have actually stopped my husband from attempting to correct.  I just love them so much, and I know they’ll be fixed on their own in time.  So, for the moment, I just want to revel in them.

coconuts = “poconuts”

backpack = “pack-pack”

umbrella = “bwing-gwew-wa” (it’s a weird one, but they both say it the same way)

remote = “ma-rote”

kite = “tite”

And, best of all, Daniel’s rendition of the chorus to “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” from Mary Poppins.

Wet’s go fwy a tite

Up fwoo da highest heights

Wet’s go fwy a tite

And send it snoring.

Up fwoo de atmosphere

Up where de air is cwear.

Oh, wet’s go…. fwy a tite!

So, what are your all-time favorite toddler mispronounciations?

We’ve had our share of those in the past that sounded lewd, especially when Daniel was obsessed with flags and would SHOUT anytime he saw a flagpole, “Flag on a stick! Flag on a stick!”  Except, well… the “l” in flag was dropped, and the “st” in stick came out more like a “d.”  It was alarming.

I almost don’t know where to start.  I feel like my blood pressure is through the roof, my heart is racing, and I’m liable to fall down in a heap at any moment.  Such is parenting Daniel at age 2 years, 11 months.

When he is good, he is very very good.  He is curious and inquisitive, always asking how something works, what we’re going to do next, and “what kind of thing” is his version of “why” in the realm of never-ending toddler questioning. He is incredibly charming. If he is so inclined, he can work a room like nobody’s business.  We’ve been out for lunch and had several waitresses fawning over him and people coming over from other tables to compliment him.  A barista at our local Starbucks is positively in love with him, and has started insisting I bring him in on their birthday next month.  He has delightful manners, lots of spontaneous “Mama, may I pweese have X?” and casual “oh, sanks” when you give him something.  He is funny and silly and bright and highly verbal and has a memory like a steel trap.

And sometimes I would like to clamp him in a steel trap.

Because the other side of Daniel is a complete psychopath.  There are scarcely words to describe it.  Defiant and contrary doesn’t even begin. When he’s in a mood, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say he spends about 50% of his day in this kind of mood, he is nothing short of a nightmare.  Picking fights over everything, from what to have for breakfast to putting the toilet paper in the toilet. I’m not kidding.  Sometimes it’s a pursed face, a pout, angry eyebrows. Silence. Daring me.  I ask him to do something. He covers his eyes with his hands, face still angry.  I count to 1. Staring me down.  I count to 2. A shrieked “NO!” and a stomped foot. That’s three, into time out.

My kids have always handled time outs pretty well.  Very often I could just send them and they’d walk there themselves. They almost never got out before I told them to.  Sometimes there was crying, but not always.

Now?  Now, with Daniel, it’s another way to test me.  “NO! I DON’T WANT A TIME OUT!” He gets up. I put him back. He stays there, but lashes out. Hits anything in reach – the chair, the door, a book.  Screams and yells at the top of his lungs. Sometimes just an angry “AAHH!”  Sometimes a positively furious “NO!”

I ignore it.  If he’s in his time out and not destroying anything or hurting anyone, I ignore it because I know he just wants to further engage me in another fight.  The screaming continues well after the timer beeps and I (as quietly and calmly as I possibly can) tell him he may get down. He keeps right on screaming.

And then, as quickly as the nastiness begins, the psycho switch flips and he walks out. “Mommy, what are you making?”, he asks with wonder and curiosity and reverence.  I tell him I’m making lunch.  “Oohh.  Peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”  Yep.  “Ooohhh.  Sank you, Mommy.”

Literally one sentence, one second to the next.  He flips from having a complete temper tantrum to back to his normal self.  I have emotional whiplash from the back and forth.  Because it goes back in the other direction just as fast. Sometimes I know what is likely to set him off (naptime, OMFG), and sometimes it’s a complete shock.

We were in Starbucks this morning, I gave the kids a warning that it was almost time to go home.  Daniel responds with, “oh, OK! I’m ready to go now.”  Tosses his chocolate milk in the trash, gleefully shouts “see you later!” to the entire staff, and practically skips out the door.  I ask him to hold my hand while we cross the parking lot, and BAM.  “I DON’T WANT TO GO HOME! I DON’T WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND!  WAAAAAHHHHH!”  Bucks in the carseat so I can’t get the seat belt on. Shouts at his sister.  Get home, and he refuses to take the seat belt OFF.  More crying. Another disastrous time out.  Another freaky switch back to normal behavior.  Back and forth and back and forth, all day long.

There are people who meet him and think I must be crazy.  What a delightful child you have! He’s so sweet! So funny! So smart! So charming! But I know.  I know it can, and will, turn on a dime.

I am completely, emotionally, mentally, and physically drained.  I try and try not to lose my temper. I try to stay calm, stay quiet, not engage with the fight-picking and power struggles.  I try to be consistent and predictable.  I try not to hold a grudge from the awful times and to encourage the good ones instead of launching into a tirade about how awful he was behaving and why it’s driving me over the edge. When he flips back to nice-Daniel, I try to act happy and pile on the good attention and compliment his nice manners.

It almost goes without saying that sometimes I do a whole lot better than others.  Sometimes I don’t do very well at all.  Sometimes I yell. Sometimes I slam a door.  More than I’d really care to admit. It’s not pretty.  But I try.

I’m at a loss, to be honest.  I’m not sure where to go next. I don’t know how to get rid of this insanely bipolar behavior.  If there’s an effective punishment to be had, I’m not exactly sure what it is. (Did I mention he’s become a retaliatory urinator? Yes, intentional peeing when he’s extra pissed off and I send him to his room.)  I’m not sure how to reward the good behavior enough for it to have an effect but without going overboard.  But it’s awful. I re-read this post and know that I’m not even doing justice to the insanity.  M and I sometimes just stare at each other with our mouths open, wondering what the hell just happened.

I know, from reading blogs of some of you moms with slightly older kids and talking to friends, that this is pretty well within the realm of “normal” behavior for this age.  I know that the testing limits is developmentally appropriate.  But, alas, that knowledge does not stop me from wanting to smack the taste out of his mouth, and we are NOT a physical-discipline family.  I just want more time with my sweet, sweet boy who is so funny and so smart and so delightful.  But even when that sweet boy appears, I’m still on edge. Waiting for the other shoe to drop (or for it to be picked up and thrown on the floor in a fit of rebellion).

SERENITY, NOW!