Tantrums and Forgetfulness

Living with two-year old can be tiresome to say the least.  Evie can alternate from being the sweetest girl in the world to a completely awful, tantrum throwing child in the blink of any eye.  Our method for dealing with these tantrums is to talk calmly to Evie, try and redirect her, or to ignore her (as long as she’s not doing anything to hurt herself or someone else) depending on the situation.  I’ve tried explaining to her that she can’t act that way, but when she’s in the middle of a screaming fit, you cannot reason with her.   She’s also been going through a little bit of separation anxiety which has been hard.  I started with this bit of information to give you an idea of how things happened yesterday. 
 

Because everything is better with a box of Cheez-Its

Yesterday started out rough, with her crying and reaching for me as I tried to leave for work.  I hate going to my job on a normal day, but having to see my little girl standing at the window with tears streaming down her face as I drove away broke me.  I cried all the way to work.  Later on, after work, I decided to take Evie on a walk and to the park.  It was gorgeous evening and I just wanted to enjoy it.  I made the mistake of mentioning the park when I picked her up from the sitter’s house.  We had to stop by our house first so that I could change and let Crosby out since Pat was working.  As soon as I stopped the car, she flipped out, saying “No Mama! We go to park!”.  I tried telling her that we were going in a minute, but she resisted me getting her out of the car and then threw herself on the ground, crying.  She refused to come inside so I basically had to drag her kicking and screaming.  Once inside, she completely stopped crying and was fine.  We headed out to the park ten minutes later to her delight.  Our walk before the park was relaxing for the most part.  Evie enjoys taking walks and we usually sing songs like ‘The Ants Go Marching” while we walk.  However, if she gets bored, she ends up tossing things out of the stroller left and right.  First one shoe, then the other.  Her sunglasses.  Her Pacifier.  Her water cup.  Next her socks came off, but instead of throwing them, she put them on her hands and waved to every person and car that went by, yelling “Hi!”.  Then she stuffed them in her mouth.  Then she threw them.  *Sigh*  She enjoyed playing in the park after our walk, went down the ‘big kid’ slide dozens of times and didn’t even put up too much of a fuss when it was time to go home.  

The trouble started when I tried to put her in the car.  She has suddenly decided that she needs to explore our van and sit in the front seat so she can push all the buttons.  I have no idea where she got the idea that she can do this, but it makes trying to wrangle her into her car seat extremely hard.  She pitched a fit, she screamed, she cried.  She also desperately needed her diaper changed which made matters worse.  I finally got her buckled, put the stroller in the car, along with all of her stuff, grabbed my keys from the top of the car (I always put them there to insure that I don’t accidently lock them in the car), and drove home, Evie crying the entire way.  After getting home, feeing Evie dinner, managing to eat a few bites of dinner myself, cleaning up the kitchen and making Evie’s lunch, I went to get my phone to take a picture of something when I realized that I couldn’t find it.  I emptied my purse, the diaper bag, checked the car, looked around downstairs.  No luck.  Then it dawned on me… I had put my phone on top of the car with my keys.  And I was pretty sure that I had only grabbed my keys in the midst of the chaos of leaving the park.  Here I was, all proud of myself for staying calm in that situation, not yelling or losing my cool, and I LEFT MY PHONE ON TOP OF THE VAN.   I have had a cell phone for years and I’ve never done that before.  Ever!  I grabbed Evie and we drove back to park, but no luck.  At this point I just had meltdown.  Obviously a phone is not reason to lose it, but it had been such a long day already and now my NEW Iphone that I had only had month was gone.  Plus it doesn’t take much these days for me to start crying.  I Facetimed my mom and probably freaked her out because I was sobbing went we connected.  Of course she told me to calm down, that a phone was not worth getting so upset, that we’ve all done stuff like that before, especially when screaming kids are involved.  Thank goodness for moms.  She suggested that I use the I Phone Locator app on my Ipad and see if my phone was anywhere nearby.  I had completely forgotten that I could do that and, sure enough, the locator said that my phone was about a mile from the park, near a busy road.  I grabbed Evie and headed out again.  We walked up and down the stretch of road where it said my phone was, but I still couldn’t find it.  A nice man even tried to help.  I’m sure he thought I was nuts.  I’m 8 months pregnant and obviously look like I’ve been crying, holding a barefoot toddler on my hip, walking up and down a street looking in the grass and on the road searching for missing phone.  At this point I finally just gave up.  I had to get Evie home, bathed and put to bed. When Pat got home from work that night, he decided to go back and see if he could find it.  Apparently after searching both sides of the road, he was crossing the street and saw something.  Yep.  My phone.  Completely destroyed.  Cue meltdown number 2.  I am not irresponsible and I'm a pretty organized person normally.  I just can't seem to keep i[ with things lately and I forgot everything.  Ironically I had read an article earlier that day saying the pregnancy brain is legitimate thing, caused by hormones or something.  I think I’ve proved a lot recently.  I forget what I’m doing in the middle of doing it!  I really wish I could have had a glass of wine last night.  I settled for a non-alcoholic beer and a Benadryl.  Needless to say, Evie and I both slept well after our exhausting evening.    Hopefully today will be a better day.
 

The remains of my phone