Thursday, November 13, 2008

Anatomy of a Tantrum

This morning after doing our four-thousand-times-a-week cleaning of the children's room, they were delighted to see that I had pulled the Lego Table back out so that we can fit another dresser in the closet. So of course, even though we've had this table since Olivia was around 9 months old (Dad and Tanya passed it on to us) the kids were ECSTATIC that suddenly WE HAVE LEGOS!

It's been a Lego party ever since.

This brings good and bad moments. But honestly, I think the photos I just got were quite possibly the highlight of my day.

I heard happiness and laughter singing sweetly through the hallway, had many visits from pleasant faced little humans telling me "Mommy! Mommy! Look at my hammer I built!", "Mommy, mommy, look how tall!", "Mommy! SO BIG!". I thought, I'll take my camera in and get some photos for the folks back home...

Uhhm, yes. Thus begins our course on Moods and their constant level of change in our home.

Dunk: "Wivy... have allll the welllowwwss..." stated mid-sobbing.
Me: Snaps photo. "Olivia you need to share the yellows. Are there some he can have?"
Liv: "No! These are ALL mine!"

Dunk: Continues to sob, pauses to yell, "YOU NO TAKE PICTURE OF ME! Wivy have ALL WELLOWS!"
Me: "Liv, you need to share some of those yellows with Duncan, please." (It's so easy to remain calm realizing that they're not EVEN listening to what I'm saying anyway.)

Dunk: Proving my theory in the above parentheses, he decides to act upon what I said, of course - this has been translated into Duncan, please rush at your sister and grab whatever yellows she has near her body. He walks over and picks up a few yellow Legos stuck together on the ground. ON THE GROUND, mind you.

Stage 1:
Liv: "Those are MY YELLOWS!"

Stage 2:
Liv: "MOMMMMMMMMMM! HE TOOK MY LEGOS!"
Me: "Olivia, I was watching him, he picked them up off of the ground. Now you won't have to take any off of your hammer (the thing she's building), okay? Just calm down. They were on THE FLOOR."

Stage 3:
Liv: "Noooooooooooo! NOOOOOOOOOOO! DUNNNNNKKKYYYYY!! NOOOOOOO!"

The above sentence is paired with a face equal to one in a horror movie where one toddler is ripped limb from limb by a blood-mixed saliva drooling hairy demon, in FRONT of the other toddler. In our house, this face is saved for special occasions. Such as, "THERE'S NO MORE SQUARE CEREAL?", "BUT IT'S MY TURN!", "BUT I WANTED TO SET MY PLACE!", "MMMMOOOOMMMM! I WANTED TO OPEN THE FRIDGE!", among many other pleasant, normally consecutive, situations.

Me: "Here, Liv, here's three yellow ones for you, okay? Calm down."

Stage 4: Maybe REACHING will make him give it back.
Liv: Through sobs of desperation equal to that of a locked-away-in-a-tower-Princess "Plllleaaase, those are my LEGOS. Duncan, NOOOOOO..." Meanwhile, refusing to take the Lego's I've offered back to her, lol.

Not shown: Stage 5, complete desperation. Resorts to crying hysterically and claiming that I'm ruining her life.

Dunk: Happier with his taller tower, hammer, whatever of YELLOW Legos, walks back to his side of the Lego table and begins to POSE with his prize. Yes, she is STILL screaming in the background...

Dunk: "See Mom, wellow..."

Dunk: "Eeeeee!" said while grinning, of course.

Now, in order to make this as accurate as possible - I check the time on the actual photo so you can see when I say Mood Swing, I'm more referring to swing as the swing of a battle ax rather than persae, a lovely child's swing. The photo of Duncan above was taken EXACTLY 6 minutes before this next one.

That being said... after leaving the room having given up on happy, cute children photos, 6 minutes later I walk in to find this:

Me: HARK! HAPPY CHLDREN? Could it be? "Ohh, nice tower Liv!"
Liv: "Yeah, mom, look!"

Liv: "Which one next...?" Happy, happy and fine...

Liv: La la... building... so happy... "Look Mom, it's so tall."

Dunk: "No no, goway Mom, goway, not done yet."

Playing nicely.

Oh my gosh, good thing I had the camera. That's officially two child smiles in the same time frame... from EACH child! Amazing.

There you have it folks. Turns out the Anatomy of a Tantrum is more of an... Anatomy of a Freak Show - but just feel lucky to have witnessed the photo I plan to show to all of Liv's future boyfriends, and of course, one day to her children.

Only to show them...
hey, your Mommy acted this way.

GO FOR IT.

0 comments: