I’ve missed almost everything about toddlerhood – the drunk shuffling, the chubby thighs, the squishy toddler face, the animated gibberish with a handful of half-English words thrown in and I’m glad I get to do it all over again with baby Finn, but guess what I don’t miss about toddlerhood? Tantrums.
Toddler tantrums are a special kind of suffering specially designed to make parents feel like they have failed in life. Like a baptism of fire. You spend all that time figuring out what to do with a newborn and finally you make it to the 1-year mark and you’re like “ok, I’ve got this baby thing under control” and next thing you know, a tantrum comes at you like a flaming asteroid of baby fury.
There’s no reasoning with a tantrum. You can’t sit down, have a cup of tea and talk it out like civilized people.
Tantrums are like honey badgers, they do. not. care.
Baby Finn had his first full scale toddler tantrum last night and I’m still a little shell-shocked from the fallout.
Every night during bedtime, my littlest baby will crawl up next to me real close for a snuggle and I’ll sing him a lullaby. Or 300. The deal is I have to sing until he drifts off to sleep beside me. Last night, I thought I’d give my fluish throat a break and play him a lullaby on youtube, which was a huge mistake because to him, iPhones = LET’S PLAY!! Rookie mistake on my part so I hastily said, “all done baby, mommy’s going to keep the phone and sing to you instead.”
I took the phone out of his hands and he lost it in epic baby tantrum fashion. First, he got all shouty at me for 15 minutes straight while I sat beside him and tried to calm him down. Then he flung his head onto my chest like he wanted a hug but when I hugged him, he pushed me away so I just let him be and he got more upset and tried to grab my hand to caress his head and when I did, he’d fling it off. While yelling at me the entire time. He was all “I HATE YOU! SORRY, I LOVE YOU! DON’T TOUCH ME! COME BACK, I NEED YOU! GO AWAY…” wherein I got to meet all 25 versions of his tantrum-induced multiple personality disorder characters.
It wasn’t really working so I figured he needed a change of environment and put him back in his cot, upon which he totally went berserk. He threw himself everywhere and shrieked really loudly and I just watched him thinking “WHAT HAPPENED TO MY SWEET LITTLE BABY???”
Finally, he decided to pull out his trump card – you know, the one with a picture of vomit on it. I would have already been impressed if he managed to conjure up a small amount of vomit but this kid went all the way. He vomited and vomited and vomited until there was puke all over his jammies and cot and started spilling out down the sides onto the floor. Super impressive.
After the vomit episode, he went right back to his sweet normal self like nothing ever happened. Toddlers are so emo and weird.
Dealing with toddler tantrums is a little bit like having a kungfu showdown where both parties are testing the waters, trying to figure out each other’s weak spots. Once identified, those weak spots will be mercilessly exploited so the way to do it is to show no weakness at all.
Baby Finn and I, we had our first dance and like most first dances, it was tense, awkward and somebody had to throw up. Let’s hope it gets better.
