Project 857- October 26

Well.

Saturday was.... ummm.... challenging to put it nicely.

To put it not so nicely, my child was disobedient, crazy, aggressive, and I was exhausted from constantly correcting him, disciplining him, constraining him and trying to get through the day.

My Mom always uses the phrase "some days chickens, some days feathers" and while I'm not entirely sure I know which is supposed to be the bad option of that phrase, I found myself saying that in my head several times on Saturday. It became a mantra of sorts as I climbed the stairs for a diaper change with a kicking screaming fighting toddler.

The day didn't start off too bad, however.. but I think how we started caused the rest of the day to be a series of mini-disasters.

Austin woke up at 4:30 am crying for his nonny (binkie). I raced down to his room, plugged it in his mouth and crawled back in bed.

He then woke up at 5:15 am babbling and talking all cute in his bed. My though was "oh hell no..." this was an hour earlier than we get him up on weekdays. There was no way. So I let him be, thinking he'd fall asleep again until his normal weekend wake up time of 7 am.

Well, the next time I opened my eyes, it was 9 am! Yikes! Good for me, bad for the kiddo. See, sometimes he goes into his morning nap when he wakes up so early and then his whole day gets screwed up. Sleeping until 9 meant there was no way he'd be ready for his nap at the usual 11 am time. Shoot.

So up we got and went downstairs to take some inventory.

He is into counting things now.. he only knows "1" and "2" though, so he had 3 nonnys with him but kept going "one, two, one, two one. One two, one, one two, one." Annual inventory was somewhat unsuccessful in that the books don't seem to balance in the nonny category.

Austin't other new thing is his "gasses" (sunglasses). He wants them all the time and will actually wear them for hours.

And yes, I let him have his nonnys that morning. He wanted them, I didn't feel like fighting it.

We had a Halloween party to go to later that afternoon, so I knew I had to do something to entertain Austin in the morning. We got dressed and headed out to look around the new Ross store that opened near us. The toys alone entertained him for almost 30 mins.

He is such a BOY. He kept pulling trucks (SHRUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!) off the shelves, and cars, and helicopters and motorcycles and wanted everything that made noise and had moving parts. I kept telling him that Santa would bring him the annoyingly loud construction equipment toy (maybe. Santa might lose that memo too.. never know I heard those elves lose memos easily...).

We went with the purpose of getting him new shoes. The kid is ROUGH on shoes. They fall apart quickly, get scuffed, get paint on them, get muddy... so I can't bring myself to buy him anything but outlet-price shoes.

Bring on mini-meltdown.... he would NOT let me try on the shoes I wanted to get. Like scream, pull his foot away, wiggle in the cart... sigh. So I told him he needed to let me try on the shoe or he couldn't look at the trucks.

Yes. I bribe and negotiate. Ask me if I care if this is not the "proper" way to raise a toddler.. blah blah blah.. they should do things just out of the desire to please people, not for rewards.. blah blah. I've read the articles. You live with him for a week and see how that works.

Anyways, we got the shoes, Mommy got a new purse, and we ended up with a Bag O' Monster Trucks too, that Austin enjoyed lining up when we got home.

"one, two, one. One, one, two one."

Books aren't balancing for the Monster trucks either.. strange.

Anyways, it was time to go to the Halloween party and of course he hasn't had a nap, because he "slept in." I could tell he was getting tired (it was 1:30 at this point, usually the time he is up from a nap) and that might have been what caused the BIGGEST MOST EPIC MELTDOWN IN AUSTIN HISTORY.

Here is what Austin was supposed to be for Halloween:

Super cute right??? Its just a shirt and pants. I put the shirt on him, he looked at it and went "no! No! No! noooooooooooooooooo!!!!" and ripped the shirt off and ran away, crying.

I chased him. Caught him. Held him down and tried to put the pants on, all the while telling him this was his costume and so cool and all that jazz. Imagine a wilderbeast thrashing about and that is what Austin was doing. With some major tears and snot running down his face.

I gave up and he just sat there, sniveling at me.

So we went on to Plan B

He's a Blazer fan. It was the best I could do.

Let's see, then he refused to put on his sweatshirt, and freaked out because he didn't want to wear these shoes and we got in the car and cried that he wanted his "gasses" which weren't in the car and I put on classical music and hoped and prayed....

Yesssss............

Only, he was SO tired that we got to the party and he was snoring. I just couldn't wake him yet so we sat in the car for 30 more mins so he'd have about an hour nap. I figured it was better than nothing, and hoped he'd perk up at the party.

The party was fun and I ate about 1,000 tortilla chips because Austin kept reaching in the bowl and grabbing a chip, taking a bite, and throwing it back in the bowl, so I had to take the chip out and eat it so there wasn't a whole bowl of toddler-munched chips.

He did have fun with his lady friend Emma though! These two together are just the cutest.. they look like blondey twins and have so much fun running around!

After a few hours of trying to wear my kid out, we headed home and ended the night with this fun exchange:

"Austin! do not throw your trucks."

"I told you not to throw your trucks. If you throw them one more time, I'm putting them away."

"Austin! Do NOT pull on Henry. That hurts him."

"Ow! Austin, do not pull Mommy's hair! That hurts Mommy... and ow!!!! that's my eye. Austin, don't poke people in the eye, that is not nice."

"Ok, off, off, owwww! get off Mommy now. DO NOT HIT MOMMY! That is not what we do to people."

Lordy.

One highlight of the night though was he got a Halloween card from his Great-Grandma Darlene and was pretty excited about it.

And we did manage one nice picture after all the floor-playing-eye-poking

Then, finally bedtime. GLORIOUS. We went upstairs and read about a dozen books.. mostly Dr. Seuss. Have you ever read tons of Dr. Seuss all in a row? Your throat starts to constrict after awhile from all the similar sounding rhyming words and just shuts down after a bit. (hack, cough)

After he went to bed I pretty much collapsed into bed too and just hoped that tomorrow would be a bit better in ToddlerLand.

And he is still 3 months away from actually be 2 years old... sigh... help.