Golden Pig Tales

While we try to teach Ezra not to hit, and I feel we do good at teaching Ezra not to hit for he rarely swings to hit, Ezra does hit once during awhile. He has two main ways of hitting. There’s the wild swing of a floppy arm that is usually followed by him stepping away and saying, ,,NO!” Then there is his Tiger Claw.

The Tiger Claw is used rarely by Ezra and only on a kid and always because of a dispute over a toy he wants or doesn’t want to share. He’s pretty fast with the Tiger Claw and pretty effective at poking the kid’s eye then grabbing the kid’s face causing the kid to squint and miss their Tiger Claw.

Sometimes Ezra likes to sing a little clean up song while he cleans up his toys, or helps to clean up some other mess that’s usually been made with his help. It goes like this: “clean up, clean up, everybody clean up! clean up clean up everybody clean up!” you can repeat those verses for as long as it takes to clean up the mess.  Tonight, the thought of cleaning up a mess sent Ezra off into temper tantrum land. No clean up song was sung, and we nearly ended the evening with tears and crying. Fortunately, another song helped end the night on a better note - a happy and lengthy version of “wheels on the bus” brought Ezra out of his tantrum and helped settle him down to go to sleep.

Ezra hasn’t really been happy about going to playcare after spending a fun week with Gramma O. Ohhhhh no. I’ve had to leave him crying, or  in today’s case, screaming. Even the arrival of his friend Maya didn’t make him happy. So, I feel pretty bad about leaving him. This is not easy nor a very pleasant way to start the day. The last time he cried about staying at daycare was months and months ago when his favorite teacher wasn’t there in the morning. The daycare is a little more chaotic the last couple of weeks due to some reorganization they’re doing and renovations at the preschool house, so that might be contributing. Maybe tomorrow I will stay a little longer with him in the morning. Hopefully he’ll get back to having fun times and waving ‘bye to me as he goes off to play with his friends. sigh.

I’ve been taking Ezra to swim lessons since Monday of last week. He’s enjoying being in the water - especially last week when it was soooooo unusually hot. But I don’t think he’s really into swimming lessons themselves. For starters, he hasn’t learned the first lesson - how to put your face in the water and blow bubbles. I think he may have some latent memory of the womb and how he used to inhale/swallow amniotic fluid like a fish in a pond, because every time he sticks his face in the water he either drinks or inhales.  He likes to splash and play with some of the toys, and he likes the part where we sing “Motor boat motorboat go so slow, motorboat motorboat go so fast, motorboat motorboat kick up the gas!” Except at that last part, after we have all gone around in a circle faster and faster, we’re supposed to put our faces near the water and blow bubbles and Ezra of course is either drinking or sputtering and the teachers are looking at me funny. But that’s OK. Ezra doesn’t really like to do what they want anyway, he’d much rather play his own games and sing his own songs and splash me with water. I think his last straw with the lessons was  the toy incident of last week where he stomped out of the pool in protest of being told he had to give up a toy.   Maybe he’s already got a problem with authority figures?

Ezra wanted his mommy, but he only had me because mommy needed some Mommy Alone Time as daddy has had his Daddy Alone Time.

Ezra still wanted his mommy because my explanation wasn’t enough, so much so that he began to call me mommy soon after -v- left and saying, ,,Hi, mommy.” He did this with a smile after fits of tears for MOMMY, MOMMY, MOMMY! He called me mommy over and over and over again, which was fine with me because he wasn’t screaming it. He did begin to scream it again after he realized the real mommy was not home.

I was able to subdue Ezra with Sesame Street and potato chips, but after I stopped feeding potato chips and after I stopped playing Sesame Street Ezra wanted his mommy again.

He let me know it. He cried, fussed, told me, ”No,” when I tried to change his diaper and put on his night time cloths. He screamed a scream many horror movie directors would love to dub into the films for me simply telling him that mommy wasn’t home right now.

There was nothing I could think to do, but let him cry. So we stayed in his room as he cried, as he sucked on his binky and as he soon fell asleep.

Mommy will be home for him during the morning. Then I will be daddy again.

,,Binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, BINKY, BINKY, BINKY, BINKY, BINKY, BINKY, BINKY! BINKY! GIVE ME MY BINKY!!!” said Ezra many times tonight.

He wanted his binky tonight, but the last binky remains in his room and doesn’t leave because it is the last binky. So it was, ”Binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, binky, BINKY, BINKY, BINKY, BINKY, BINKY, BINKY, BINKY! BINKY! GIVE ME MY BINKY!!!” just about every other moment we were not in his room.

Food and making his imaginary farm were the few times he didn’t say binky when not in his room. When in his room, he got his binky, so his mouth was stuffed with a binky, so he couldn’t say, ”Binky.”

I woke up to Ezra fussing really, really loud this morning. I found it was because -v- was trying to change Ezra’s diaper. This has been a sound I haven’t heard much during the past couple days for he didn’t fuss much when we had to clean up his diarrhea and change his diaper. The really, really loud fussing from Ezra woke me from sleep because of a diaper change, and at first I was grumpy about it, but then I realized that if he is fussing about his diaper then he is returning to health.

Today I went on YouTube and watched some videos that I got as a result when I googled “toddler tantrum diaper change”, which I did because of the tantrum Ezra had this morning when we were trying to get him out of a dirty diaper and into his new one and the rest of his clothes for the day.  The videos I saw made me feel better-er than the other various posts I read about toddler temper tantrums, because I at least was able to see proof that other toddlers put up crazy flailing-on-the-floor-kicking-the-wall-crying fits for whatever reason a toddler might have for such things, and that some of those toddlers are even crazier tantrum throwers than Ezra. 

Trying to put Ezra to bed tonight was….trying. It all started when I tried to brush his teeth after his bath. Bad Idea. Nothing would go right after that. He didn’t want me to put his clothes on, but was too frustrated to try to put them on himself, and too cold not to put them on. Finally he calmed down and we got the PJs on, and then he let me pick him up, and then we listened to some johnny cash for a while…Hopefully this was just a tired tantrum and nothing is wrong…

Today was another day of trying to find what Sesame Street segement Ezra wanted to watch. While he once loved to watch I’ve Got Two, now he can’t say, ,,No,” fast enough until I’ve Got Two is turned to another Sesame Street segement (which is too bad because it was really cute to see him mimic Susan and Bob). There is the one with Little Bird and Big Bird he liked for about two days. He didn’t like that one today. He didn’t like the segment from the first episode about milk that he use to love to watch.

In fact, he didn’t want to watch more than a few seconds of anything today except the segment about the number three, and then he only wanted to watch it once, which is fine, but it is not like he wanted to watch it once, stop and do something else. That was not the case. Instead he expected -v- to skip through the segments with him watching a few seconds before he said, ”No.” If she waited for a few seconds more before she hit the remote to show the next segment then he said, ”No, no, no, no…” until it was turned. So one would think that he didn’t want to watch anything, so we turned it off and he said, ”No, no, no, no…” and became fussy as if he only wanted a few seconds of everything.

Ezra is awesome and I love him more than just about anything. The past few days, however, Ezra has been super mom-clingy and moody. Ever since we went back to daycare after our extended holiday/snowday “staycation”, Ezra has seemed to revert to being a superfan of mom and only mom. He gets upset when dad is the one who walks in his room in the morning. He is upset when I am not the one to soothe him when he takes a tumble. He gives me a scowl and furrowed brow when I say bye bye at playcare in the mornings. He screams and cries when he does not get his way in the realm of toys or food or diaper changing. I am hoping that this is a short-lived phase, but think it could be the start of the terrible twos?