I am officially off for 5 days. Hooray! I’m looking forward to some extra time with my kiddos who have needed some extra Mama time the past few days.
It’s nice, though, after a rough week or so. I think things are slowly mellowing a bit and I’m really keeping an eye on how I handle Enzo and his tantrums. It’s been more about trying to head them off really, and while it can take more time, I’ve already talked him out of a couple of tantrums. I really do think he’s appreciated it too because after it happened is when he started being super Mama needy. This morning his dad brought him in and he was wriggly with the happiness and practically leapt into my arms. Maybe both of them can sense that I’m really trying to work on keeping my anger in check and trying to just be more at ease.
I’m not perfect and got snappy this morning because he was pushing my buttons, but I noticed it, and stopped myself from falling into that back-and-forth with him and he did cooperate. I’m figuring him out, though, so now I just need to show Josh how to do the same and our mornings/evenings should go easier. I know we’re still going to have those moments where nothing will stop a tantrum, but that’s fairly normal for this age. As for why Miss Phoebe has been super clingy… I couldn’t tell you, but I think it might be teething and just this age as well.
One of things we both need to work on is that sometimes I have to be okay with her just crying, and she in turn also has to learn that sometimes she has to wait. She gets rather impatient very quickly and then suddenly she’s got crocodile tears rolling down her cheeks. I, of course, get stressed because my immediate reaction is to stop all the crying. ALL the crying. I always knew this would be hard for me… ever since middle school when we had to take those fake babies home for the weekend and mine was colicky and cried all the time. I was so stressed out because I felt I was failing as a fake mom to my fake baby because I couldn’t make it stop crying. So, yeah, going into real parenthood, I knew that crying babies stressed me out. Boy were we lucky with two calm babies!
All that being said, knowing that Winter is the hardest time of the year for me, I’m doing what I can to be more diligent when it comes to taking care of my mental and physical health. They obviously respond better to me when I can remain calm, so my goal is to continue to be mindful in everything I do. I can’t tell you how good it felt when I was able to talk Enzo out of a tantrum that normally would have led to 10 minutes of screaming and yelling. It only took a minute or two and it actually gained us time by just stopping everything and calmly helping him take a breath and figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. I shall be Whisperer of Toddlers!
Anyhoo, here’s to a wonderful last week of 2014 and a mindful, peaceful 2015!
And Wonton Makes Three 