Three little words. So sweet in concept. So overwhelming in practice.
Aiden wants to be carried. All. The. Time. If he’s offered the stroller, he’ll usually take it, but the stroller isn’t always an option. For example, we have daily struggles walking to and from the garage. Most days I can coax him to walk it, but other days turn into huge tantrums.
Now, I’m not averse to carrying Aiden sometimes, and he knows it. If he’s tired and it’s close to a nap, I don’t even try to get him to walk. However, when I put my foot down and tell him he has to walk, I don’t back down. Ever. Sometimes he doesn’t either, and that results in me sort of carrying him limply under the arms since he’s really not going to budge otherwise and I refuse to carry him the way he wants.
Aiden likes to cuddle, and I think his desire for carrying comes from that. He appreciates the closeness. But with all my injuries, I just can’t handle carrying him all the time.
Aiden doesn’t throw many tantrums, but almost all of them are around wanting to be picked up. If I limit his times out of the house to his non-tired times, I can usually avoid an argument over walking, but sometimes he still tries to put his little foot down.
“Mommy pick up” is a phrase I hear dozens of times a day. Sometimes he says it quietly, testing me and not really caring what the answer is. Most of the time, it’s said in a complete whine: “Mommy, pick-ahhhhh up Ahhhhhhh”. OMG, it makes me want to pull my hair out. It’s become his phrase for attention even when he can’t be picked up, like when he’s strapped into his car seat.
Do your kids have phrases that drive you up the wall?
I realize that not every playground or park can have a bathroom, and that not every playground will have play structures for kids of all ages, but when playgrounds are built with obvious oversights, it kind of drives me crazy.
A parent decides to fix the ‘toddler’ play area with a log in lieu of a stair
- Offering too many climbing structures and not enough for other types of play
- Having toddler ‘rocker’ toys that are several feet off the ground (inaccessible even to good climbers)
- Toddler play areas that don’t have stairs at toddler height
- Water parks that don’t offer one ‘gentle’ spray area (Kilmer is the best for this)
- Not having a single garbage can. Really?!
- Having metal toddler slides (tend to be too fast in some brands)
- Having new play structures that are flat and wooden (they become dirty faster and don’t encourage early climbing with the metal holes)
- Having only high railings across bridges
- Sand in a shady park. It always feels damp
- Placing the foot of the slide too high for a toddler to hop off
Playgrounds often follow the same pattern these days, which is a bit of a pity. I like the playgrounds that incorporate different toys, such as musical toys or teeter totters or tunnels, but they are few and far between these days.
Sure, I could go on about my pet peeves for other kids and parents in the park, but that’s a whole other post ;)
Aiden has learned to talk by mimicking us, so perhaps it’s inevitable that we begin to mimic him. Some of Aiden’s words are so endearing, that I’ve begun to use them myself. Yep, I’m talking like a toddler.
Just the other night, I texted the following to Ianiv:
“Feel free to let him play in his ‘bool’ and don’t forget the ‘gicken’.”
That’s me, taking a break, and trying to give Ianiv ideas for how to entertain our teething toddler and for what to give him for dinner. Saying pool and chicken just wasn’t as fun.
Sometimes, the words are so cute that I don’t even want to correct Aiden’s pronunciation. There’s something endearing about Aiden saying “gock” instead of “rock”, but I try to use the proper pronunciation myself, in reply… at least most of the time.
From time to time, I will find myself telling Aiden “There is no ‘Boo Whoa’” instead of
“There is no other one”, because he’s been saying Boo Whoa for so long that it’s almost a part of our shared vocabulary.
Do you find yourself talking like a toddler too?
I’m so cool. I use the Twitter. I’m on the Facebook. I interact with my customers, you know. I get it. So come join me! Click on my buttons to follow me!
IT’S A BUS. You can’t click buttons on a bus back. So don’t use button icons, moron. Do you really think I’m going to search on Google, Twitter or Facebook to find your exact handle? And which one is it? There are hundreds of remax locations and agents – which one did you mean?
Next time, think before you spend oodles of money trying to look cool by having social media icons on a bus back. It’s just as easy to say @outstandingmoron as it is to put the twitter logo.
If I’ve learned anything about being a mother to a toddler, it’s that toddlers can be completely different people from day to day.
Last week, I had the most wonderful week I’ve ever had with Aiden. Although his bedtime wanted to shift later, and we had to adjust his naps, and that resulted in some sleep hiccups, it was still an amazing week. Aiden was just so HAPPY. Tantrums were almost non-existent. He played independently for long stretches of time. He walked on his own without crying to be carried. He babbled on and on happily, coming up with new words and new games each day. It was thrilling.
You’d never know that this handsome boy was having a grumpy morningLast week was so good – filled with fun times at home, a toddler who ate anything thanks to a growth spurt, and sunshiny days at the park – I actually had occasion to say to a few people that being a parent was finally getting “easier.” That I could actually imagine, some day, a second.
Well, Monday has a way of kicking your ass, doesn’t it? Our morning was filled with tantrums, even when they seemed to come from nowhere. Though he had his happy moments, it was a weird morning. His afternoon was equally weird – I even had to breastfeed him after he melted down for some unknown reason… and he hasn’t wanted to breastfeed in our living room for about a year.
So, you have those crazy days thrown in there. But that one week gives me hope – hope that this parenting thing WILL get easier.
