Melt-downs, messes, and masterful manipulations

The girls seem to have picked up a little virus while on our vacation, as they both became congested and mildly feverish on Thursday. Nothing major, but enough to make them a little more tired and cranky than usual. Despite being stuffy and coughing, they are basically able to play as normal, so yesterday afternoon we spent a good chunk of time playing in the back yard and enjoying the beautiful spring weather. Madeleine needed to go in for a nap after an hour or so, and about forty-five minutes later I started to see signs that Julia was tiring and needed to go inside for some down time. When she gets cranky, upset, has hurt feelings, is overtired, or any combination of the above, she starts to get very contrary - ridiculously so - as you have probably gathered from previous posts about her melt-downs. I was beginning to hear the contrariness creep into her speech, ("Julia, I'm really proud of you for using your manners." "No, you are not proud of me!") and decided to nip things in the bud before she really fell apart, so I told her it was time to go inside in ten minutes. She of course didn't want to, which led to a screaming fit about wanting to stay outside, with me carrying her kicking and screaming into the house. Once inside, I followed my typical method of dealing with her fits, which is to basically ignore them, unless she's doing something unsafe. When she gets into this contrary mode, it's as if she gets herself stuck, and needs to spit out as many preposterously contrary statements as she can to get her anger out, and I always get the sense that she's trying to ruffle my feathers with what she says, so I generally just tune her out until she's over it and is ready to apologize and get on better behavior. Yesterday's fit took things to a new extreme; here are some of the things she was shouting out at me: "Mommy, you did NOT say go upstairs. Mommy, YOU DID NOT say go upstairs! Mommy, YOU DID NOT SAY GO UPSTAIRS!" (for about 10 minutes straight.) "Mommy, I was not being mean to you. I was being mean to WYATT. I was being NICE to you." "Mommy, it was NOT ten minutes Mommy. It was FOUR minutes. Mommy, it was FOUR minutes! It was NOT TEN MINUTES MOMMY!" "Mommy, I want to be ALONE from you." (Me: "Then go in the other room, because I don't really want to be around you when you're acting like this anyway.) Followed by: "No, Mommy, I WANT to be with you! I do NOT want to go in the other room Mommy!"

At one point, I lifted her up and carried her into the living room so that she wouldn't wake up Madeleine (seeing as she had been throwing her fit right by the back door, which is also right by the stairs leading up to Madeleine's bedroom.) I left her in the living room to carry out her fit and made myself busy on my computer in the dining room while she blew up at nothing. The absolute pinnacle of ridiculousness came while she was in there: "Mommy, this is NOT a living room! This is NOT a living room, Mommy! We don't HAVE a living room. Mommy, this is another DINING ROOM!"

Wow. She showed me. Harshness.

I guess my non-responsiveness was starting to bug her because she decided to come into the dining room and spout contrary statements at me while I typed away. I'm not sure if she suddenly wearied of being angry, or if it happened to dawn on her that she would rather be resting on the couch watching tv, but mid-contrary vitriol, she suddenly whined, "Soooory! Mama, I'm soooory!" I looked at her but didn't respond, because I didn't love the tone she was using to apologize. She whined a few more sorries at me, then asked me, in a completely normal voice, "But Mama, could I watch a show?"

End of story: I gave her a 15 minute probation period to get her act together and change her behavior, after which she was able to happily watch Curious George with some snack and juice, and all was well in her world once again.

Moving on to Madeleine, I had one of my yuckiest parenting moments to date yesterday. I was getting her ready for her bath, and decided to just whip off her onesie and diaper in the bathroom and pop her into the tub, figuring I didn't really need to wipe her pee if she was about to get washed. That is, I was assuming all she had in her diaper was pee. WRONG. I was sitting on the toilet, lid down, pulled off her clothes and diaper with her still on my lap, only to see an enormous load of poop in the diaper. But, of course, she was already sitting bare-bummed on my lap. And I was wearing shorts, so she was actually sitting bare-bummed on my bare legs. Awesome. Now, having worked with kids all my life, and having two little ones of my own, I am not usually squeamish - I've cleaned up poop, vomit, spit-up, and the works, but something about having both thighs covered in fresh poop really grossed me out, to the point where I had to call Ethan to come deal with Madeleine because all I could think about was getting myself cleaned off. EW!

And one final Madeleine anecdote - that little stinker somehow figured out how to wriggle out of her Sleep Sack overnight - without it coming unzipped. I have no idea how she did it, but when Ethan brought her to me to nurse this morning, she was wearing the sleep sack down around her ankles. Yes, this kid is going to be trouble!!