A lesson in trust and obedience. That she failed. Twice.

There’s this thing that happens when your teeny weeny little precious baby turns into a toddler. It happens when they start developing their own ideas and thoughts. It happens when they start figuring out that sometimes what they want to do doesn’t coincide with what Mommy and Daddy want them to do.

You see, eventually, your teeny weeny little precious baby turns into a toddler who starts disobeying. It’s inevitable.

We’ve (more than) reached that stage. So, now, our responsibility lies not only in keeping this tiny human alive but also in teaching her how to behave, what the rules are and how important it is to follow them. Yup. Now we have to start figuring out this whole discipline thing.

We have a busy, independent, creative and sassy toddler. I’m almost certain that those four words describe almost every toddler on the planet, but for some reason, parents always act like it’s surprising when they act that way. It’s not. But, I digress. She’s a typical toddler. She sees where the boundaries are and she tries to push them as far as she can, in every direction that she can. She is trying to figure out just what’s what and who’s the boss. We are also trying to figure out just what’s what and how to show her that we are the boss.

Her father says that she talks too much and listens too little. But, overall, we both agree she does pretty well. She is learning to respond appropriately to discipline and follow the rules. The key word is learning. Of course, she doesn’t always do these things. In fact, she most often doesn’t. But she’s figuring out the concept of “1, 2, 3”, timeouts and apologizing.

This week, she had two (separate but similar) opportunities for a test in trust and obedience. One with me and one with her father. She failed them both. And both times? Evan and I were left giggling to ourselves behind her back, shaking our heads and thinking to ourselves, and each other …. we are in for it.

Lately, as I’ve mentioned multiple times, Evalyn is super interested in caring for her babies. One of her favourite things is to “change bumbums” when they are “doorty”. With that, she wants to wipe them, “keen” them, and put a new diaper on them. I have been teaching her that she’s not allowed to play with the disposable wipes. When she wants to change a dolly’s bum, she is allowed to get a cloth diaper liner from her drawer and pretend that it is a wipe.

The other day, she and I were playing in her room. She wanted to “change bum bums” of one of her dolls. We started the typical process. She looked at the container of wipes under her change table and then looked at me. She waited a few seconds and then said, “Mommy. Out peas”. Hm, perfect learning opportunity, I thought.

The rest of the conversation went something like this:

Me: “You want Mommy to go out of your room?”
Eva: “Yes, peas”.
Me: “Okay, mommy will go to the kitchen for a minute. You can play in here.”
Eva (as I start walking out of the room): “Shut door, peas.”
Me: “Okay. You be a good girl”.
Eva: “Good girl”.

I went out and shut the door, clearly knowing what she was up to. Two minutes later, when I went back to her room and opened the door I was not, in the least bit, surprised to see the wipe container open and wipes flung everywhere.

Immediately she looked up at me, all guilty like, and said “Oops. Sowwy Mama” as she quickly attempted to shove every single wipe back into the container.

Sheesh kid.

Then the next day, she and Evan were playing outside of her room. She got up and walked inside, began shutting the door and said, “Bye bye Daddy”. Again, perfect learning opportunity.

He left her for less than a minute before opening the door. Any guesses what he found? Yep. She was sitting in the middle of the room with the wipes beside her. This time she hadn’t had time to open them and get them out. But when he walked in, she looked up, said nothing more than “Oh”, quickly put them back under the table, took Evan’s hand and said “Come on Daddy. Yet’s play!” and lead him to her toy box.

Of course, the issue is not really whether or not she plays with wipes. It wouldn’t be very hard for me to clean up after her and put the disposable wipes back into the container after she’s done spewing them all over her room. The issue lies in her learning that this is an item that is off limits, not a toy, and we’ve told her she can’t play with it. And let’s not forget the other issue – this kid is just too smart for her own good.

Let the fun times roll.

Some real stuff

This is going to be a Debbie Downer post. I’m warning you. I contemplated whether or not I should even post it because I don’t really like to air my dirty laundry and spend my time complaining on the blog. But the truth is? Sometimes it’s needed. This is my real. It’s the real of motherhood, of marriage and of life. It’s probably also pretty incoherent but today, I just needed to write.

I am starting out this week absolutely and entirely burnt out, exhausted and feeling helpless. Last week was, arguably, my most difficult week of motherhood to date.

I feel like I did a less than stellar job in my role as Evalyn’s mother. First, we had the food poisoning incident which obviously wasn’t my fault but definitely hindered my ability to parent my kid. Throughout the ordeal, although not being sick, she just seemed off. At first, we attributed it to her being separated from me way more than she’s used to. Normally, she goes to daycare two mornings a week for 3.5 hours each time and on the evening I work, I leave less than an hour before she’s in bed. So, really, she’s with me the majority of the time. Last week, she was at daycare Tuesday morning, all day Wednesday and Thursday morning. Wednesday was her first full 8-5 day and by the end of it, she was beside herself. She wouldn’t even go to Ev when we got home. She wanted her Mama. Add to that I ended up having to leave her with her Auntie Keik on Friday while I went to do my glucose test and she was not a happy camper.

And as the week progressed, we started to realize that maybe it was more than just the effects of feeling disconnected from me. She started showing some of her tried and true teething signs and by Friday we quickly figured out that the eye teeth, they is a comin’. And seriously, I am confident that they have brought with them some sort of demon. She is a completely different child. No other round of teething has been like this.

Thankfully, Saturday morning I was surprised to notice that the top two have cut through. We didn’t even see them coming and were totally expecting the bottoms to show up first. So, hopefully, they won’t be far behind because neither of us are sure how long we can handle this cranky pants child.

And when I say cranky pants, I don’t just mean a little whiny. I mean, crying non stop during all waking hours. And many sleeping hours, as well. This morning? Up for good at 4:45. Not cool. She will barely touch a bite of food, which is understandable because her mouth hurts. But no food = hungry toddler = cranky toddler. Vicious cycle. Thank goodness for fruit smoothies and baby food pouches. They are my saving grace right now.

The whining is epic. The tantrums are out of control and I feel like I’m walking on eggshells because I have no idea what is going to set her off at any given moment. It’s ironic because I feel like I so badly need a little break, despite the fact that this past week I spent the least amount of time with her that I ever have in her life.

I’m caught in this place where I’m struggling (often times, tearfully) attempting to figure out where the balance is between, “I know you are teething and you are uncomfortable” and “That doesn’t mean you can behave any way you’d like”. As parents, Evan and I are still working out and negotiating what our best form of discipline is. Before becoming parents we had a trillion billion ideas of how we’d handle discipline, of course. Now that we’re in the moment? These decisions don’t seem so clear cut. Sometimes her language development makes it difficult for us to get a full grasp on exactly where she’s at cognitively. She talks a lot and she talks well. So sometimes this makes us forget that she’s only 18 months old, still a baby really, and probably can’t reason as well as we sometimes assume she can. It’s seems like we’re doing this awkward dance stepping all around, trying to sort out just how much she understands in terms of behaviour = consequence. Lord help us. We surely can’t do this alone.

Last night’s dinner was probably are most challenging parenting moment to date. Finally, Evan just bundled her up and took her outside, despite the fact that it was raining and chilly, because we knew that was the only thing that would work. And when they left? I lost it. I broke down. I cried. And I prayed, pleading with God to give me patience and help us to know how to deal. It was one of those moments were you just feel like you’re at the end of your rope. Even though I know I’m not. I know that every time I get to that place, God unravels a little more of my rope and gives me a little more. So now, I just continue to pray. For patience, for wisdom, for guidance. I have a feeling this will be the theme for, oh, the rest of my life?