emotional meltdowns

My boys are driving me nuts. They're both crying right now. That's why I'm down here in computerland avoiding them.

Oh I know, I'm supposed to walk around with the baby on my shoulder and the toddler on my hip, but I'm just not in the mood for it at the moment!

Mitchell is a pretty good baby - as long as he's being held. Seriously, I can't lay him down on his own for a few seconds without that lip quivering. Sometimes Jordan will come and entertain him with her baby voices and he seems to like that. Other times I just let him cry for a bit, or flip him onto his tummy. He peters out faster that way.

Tennyson has been having emotional meltdowns lately, and I know it's probably baby related. Little things set him off and he cries - only it's not really crying, it's this high pitched, shrieky, wailing howl. I am so tired of listening to it!! If I could record it and stick it on here I would, okay, not really. I don't want it infiltrating computerland. I hear it all day already. Jordan takes a toy he starts howling, he gets his little stroller stuck on a chair leg he starts howling, he drops his cup out of his highchair (you guessed it), he starts howling. If I take too long to cut up his pancake . . . I mean . . . veggie omelette - more howling. If he thinks that your dinner is different than his because it's not cut up and doesn't look the same he's convinced it's better and he points at it and starts howling. It's Driving ME NUTS!! I run out of patience for this pretty quickly and he often finds himself in the crib for a minute to howl it out. One day he laid on the floor in the hallway outside the bathroom door and screeched for 20 minutes. Why? Because Steven was showering and he wanted to play in the bathroom. Not that playing in the bathroom would be so horrible, it's when he flings open the shower curtain to look at you and the water ends up all over the floor.

The worst? The worst is the adjustment time after a nap. Like right now. He's currently standing at the babygate at the top of the stairs and angrily shrieking it out because I left him. Why did I leave him? Because he woke up screaming and crying in his crib and refused to be consoled. I try, I take him out of his crib and sit on the couch with him. Sometimes this works and he's calm - at least until I try to get up. Sometimes it doesn't work at all. He sits on me knee and cries and wiggles to get down. So I put him down. Then he looks at me as though I've cast him aside and cries all the harder. I try to pick him up and he goes all limp and slides to the floor to lay there and cry some more. He doesn't do this every day, but it is so absolutely frustrating when he does. I have no idea what to do. After a period of this I just put him back in his crib so at least he's not laying at my feet or following me around and freaking out.


Anybody else deal with this? What do you do?

Oh yeah, and now he's really mad because I went up and took this picture of him and then left him again.

Comments

Sonya said…
Dunno. I am not an expert!
Heather said…
I'm no expert but I say a little crying didn't hurt anyone. A little tough love goes a long way. Hang in there. Soon your babies will be 13 and 10 and you'll wish you could turn back the hands of time. :)

Popular posts from this blog

dinnertime/breakfast time woes

two things: one to do with running, the other with my fastly-deteriorating fashion sense

today's to-do's