Seeking the formula for parenting

Flexible Links

My Blogging Inspiration
Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Other Rants

Flexible Affiliations


Parent Bloggers Network
- Crazy/Hip Blog-Mamas+
(Random Site)
A Member of Bust's Girl Wide Web
Parenting Blogs - Blog Top Sites
blog search directory
Search For Blogs, Submit Blogs, The Ultimate Blog Directory

Monday, April 30, 2007

The Terrible Threes?

Today while I should have been packing for our road trip to Kentucky for my brother-in-law's wedding, I spent a lot of time on the phone discussing yard sale complaints from someone who had a personal table at the yard sale. Let me just say for the record unless there's some sort of large payment, many bottles of good wine or a two week cruise to Alaska (and I may need all three), I'm not coordinating the yard sale again.

After realizing that my house does in fact look like I hosted the yard sale here, and the further realizing that there's little I can do about it at this point, I decided to spend the remaining this afternoon running a couple of last minute errands for the trip. One of them was to Borders. A while back I had seen a Curious George gift set at our wholesale club. It was a book with 5 stories and 5 CDs. I didn't buy it at the time because I didn't think my older son (OS) would like it. Of course now that I had to pay full price, he suddenly loves listening to CDs. A couple of his friends have it and really like it. Anyhow, with all the hours ahead of us in the car, I thought it was worth it to get it. Luckily I got the last one. I was all set to go up and pay when OS started to melt down. I picked him up and put him in my younger son's (YS) stroller, and I wheeled him up to the cashier while carrying YS. The thing is the gift was in a large awkward box so while the cashier was ringing me up I took OS out of the stroller and put YS back in it. OS lost it. I mean purple face, hitting, screaming, fists pounding on the floor. He even threw his Crocs at me. YS started crying hysterically too. Normally I would have just left the store, but I didn't have time to go back, it was the last Curious George set, and I don't want a 3 year old to dictate my schedule. Nor did I want to punish OS by not buying him the CDs (although he didn't even know that's what I was getting) because that would be punishing the Big Giraffe, YS and me when we're pulling our hair out 6 hours into our 15 hour road trip. So I finished paying.

I was biting my lip to keep from laughing because it was almost comical. I took OS's shoes from him, and I left with a hysterical baby and a hysterical, barefoot 3 year old. I was getting the dirtiest looks and no one helped me with the door. In fact when they saw us coming, they scurried away. OS lost TV privileges for the day and his Crocs for an unspecified amount of time. He was immediately sent to his room where, not surprisingly, he fell asleep. I debated having him go back to Borders when he woke up so that he could apologize to the manager, but he was still cranky. If this becomes a habit he definitely will. I'm thinking it's because YS just started crawling. I read an article a while back that said that the hardest adjustment to new siblings comes when the new sibling begins crawling because they're invading the older one's space. Parents don't realize that's what going on because they're focusing on how for the past 9-10 months everything is has been fine. I think that's what happened with the stroller. I have noticed in the past couple weeks since YS started crawling that suddenly OS seems to have regressed in that he wants to sit in a high chair and play with baby toys.

A. Elliot's Lesson Learned: Sometimes when your kids are losing it, you just have to laugh.

Labels: ,

posted by Alex Elliot @ 8:00 PM   3 comments
3 Comments:

  • At 5/01/2007 7:10 AM, Blogger Cori said…

    Oh Wow Alex, good for you for not having a melt down yourself, I'll have to try and remember that next we are out and the same thing happens, although it hasn't happened yet I'm sure it will.

    Have a great trip, I don't envy you 15 hours in a car with all those kids, bring you MP3 player with you.

     

  • At 5/01/2007 9:15 AM, Anonymous Big Giraffe's Little Brother said…

    Wow! We are confident that our wedding will be a calming event for both OS & YS. Drive carefully and we look forward to seeing you in a couple days.

     

  • At 5/01/2007 3:10 PM, Blogger ru said…

    that is quite possibly the funniest story involving crocs ever! i can just see them - flying lightly through the air and bouncing harmlessly off of whatever they hit! are they red? they should be red!

     
Post a Comment
Home
 

My Profile

Name:Alex Elliot
Home:MA, United States
About Me:Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 5 year old and a 3 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
See my complete profile

Flexible Media Appearances

The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet, Fox TV, August 3, 2007

Flexible Feeds

More Flexible Parenting

Grasshopper New Media Parents
Just Cause
Birth Days

Flexible Categories

Previous Posts

Archives

For those of us who didn't get an instruction manual with our babies and for whom parenting hasn't always gone as planned. On a more serious note this blog is about supporting a woman's ability to make her own choices about parenting including the choice, for whatever reason, to bottle feed her babies formula.

Powered by Blogger
© Formula Fed and Flexible Parenting


Creative Commons License
Formula Fed and Flexible Parenting by Alex Elliot is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Template Design based on one produced by isnaini dot com