Oh, and in public too. I tend to like to keep the parental abuse I suffer behind closed doors.
After spending many minutes discussing the wonderful child known and MY CHILD with a friend today, my wonderful child had to go and make me curse myself. I repeatedly told her how Mateo hardly has bad days, and so, when he does, I often feel like I'm never going to last until the end of the day before the men arrive with my straight jacket, but usually and most often times he's not having bad days, and is usually very happy and loving and full of life.
Well, of course I had to go and curse myself. That is my personal tragedy in life, don't you know?
Mateo was in a mood when I picked him up from daycare. When he's in a mood, he's very demanding, and since he doesn't talk 100% perfectly, I sometimes don't know what he is demanding, which just makes the boy even more upset.
As soon as I got him in the car, he started demanding something that started with a "p" but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what he was saying. I gave him his baby #2 (blanket), his new Elmo head toy, both of which he didn't want until I tried to take both away, and then, of course, he wanted them and was mad that I was trying to take them away. He and I can play that game repeatedly, I tell you.
I gave up on trying to appease him, and got in the car and started driving home. He got his usual crackers, seemed happy enough, and when we got home, he started saying, "Home...Home!"
As soon as I parked the car, he started up again with the "p" thing he wanted, and I just ignored him because I still had no idea what he was talking about. Then I realized my husband left Mateo's pacifier in the stroller storage compartment, and when the stroller is moving, the pacifier rattles around and makes a very distinct noise. That's when it dawned on me what Mateo had been asking for - pacifier.
He immediately started yelling at me about wanting it, and I just ignored him. I opened the back door to the car and he started moaning about his pacifier and just about life in general. I asked him if he wanted to get out, and he promptly told me "NOOoooo!" I unstrapped him from his car seat and he got mad and started spewing toddler obscenities at me.
Right as I was bending back out of the car with him, he cocked his little arm back and let one mean slap fly at my face. BAM!
Needless to say, I was a tad shocked. I inhaled deeply. I said, "Mateo! No! You do not hit people!" in a calm yet firm voice.
His little face immediately bunched up and the sobs and crying let loose. Some old man walking through our parking lot started staring at us because the way Mateo was crying, it really seemed like I just slapped him across the face, and not him slapping me. Another neighbor came home and immediately ran for the hills after she got out of the car.
I gave Mateo a talking to about hitting and how that's not nice, etc., etc., managed to get the crying mass of toddler into the stroller, and proceeded to wheel him to our condo while he screamed and fought the stroller straps.
And, like the little crackhead he is, as soon as I got him in his room where there is carpeting so he could flop and flip and cry and moan without much fear of hurting himself, he crawled to his crib, looked under it, found a loose pacifier on the side of the crib, plunked that baby in his mouth and crawled back over to me and plopped himself into my lap.
We hugged it out, I told him again that hitting is not nice, and we made up.
This will be his last week of the pacifier because he really is turning into a crackhead about it, and he's going to be two, and it was time a long time ago for the pacifier to go away. We're bracing ourselves for probably the worst week of our lives when we finally do chuck those babies in the trash compactor and say goodbye because Mateo will have some serious withdrawals going on. I've been told to replace the pacifier with something else that he will think is special, but that's nearly impossible unless it's just another pacifier since that kid has too many "special" things at this point in his life.
Stay tuned for more tales of parental abuse and pacifier crackheads in the near future.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Good luck with the pacifier breaking! I was lucky, D let go of it at maybe 2 1/2 all on his own, and baby B never liked one...
Ugh and the hitting thing? Hopefully it doesn't happen again, sounds like you handled it well though. D never hit me, until one day of all things we were at the bank and did it right in front of the bank teller, talk about embarrassing. He never did it again though. Probably because much like you I didn't freak out about it :)
My two loved their dummies up to the age of two and a half. Then they were mysteriously replaced by having a pet hamster. They loved their hamsters so much they never once asked for their dummies.
Post a Comment