Tantrums Daily

Well, this past weekend was rough. Sophia has moved into full on tantrum mode now, and I kind of thought that wouldn’t happen for a few months. Sometimes things just get her out of sorts and once there nothing will bring her back from screaming and wailing. No distraction, no consoling, no comforting works. It’s almost like a question of waiting her out. But that’s really, really hard. I thought it was just happening to me, because she seems to prefer Kurt so much and behave so well for him. This weekend though he said it happens to him too. So what do you do? I ask him. I just leave her, he says. Oh, I say. Me too. Only I keep coming back to check on her. Not me, he says. I wait until she comes to find me. Well. She has legs. They work. Maybe that’s what I should be doing as well. Plus we should be consistent. And should have probably talked about it earlier. Communication. Very important. So that was the lesson. Learn to tell each other what is going on with Sophia.

Also, tell Sophia what’s going on. The fact that she understands everything we say means that if we discuss things when she’s not paying attention or in her absence and are then suddenly suiting up and getting in the car without having told her where we are going flips her out. As does reaching over to wipe her nose without having told her in advance this is about to happen.

She is too big for the high chair. She could probably still sit in it, but her feet get stuck putting her into it and taking her out of it, resulting in lots of complaints about “Stuuuuucky!”. Now she sits at the dinner table with us in a regular chair with a phone book. I think she likes this better, because it’s more like what we do. She’s really interested in imitating everything we do. She loves to put my shoes on anytime I take them off. I always thought that walking in someone else’s shoes thing was kind of metaphorical, but apparently, if you’re a toddler, it’s pretty literal. I wonder if she thinks walking in my shoes makes her think like me, or be like me, or look like me.

Last night I blew up a balloon for her. There were left over balloons from her birthday last year that had been sitting in a drawer in the kitchen at the old house. In a sweep and dump of several drawers and cabinets from the kitchen of the old house last week the balloons found their way here. She had a complete blast with this. She kept kicking it and throwing it and laughing uproariously. She was especially delighted by the fact that Sergei seemed a little scared by it. He’d dodge around it and try to always stay facing it. He was mostly playing, in that way he does with the vacuum cleaner. When I had her show Kurt later in the evening how she played with the balloon he said, “This is great! We should tape this!” I agree, we should. Despite the fact that according to a friend of mine I “take documenting your kid to new levels of tediousness” I often feel like too much is going without being recorded. It will all be washed away and forgotten if I don’t write it down, photograph it, hook up microphones and tape it, or get the video camera and make a movie out of it. And it’s worth recording, because it’s all so wonderful and life-affirming. Not because it’s Sophia, particularly, though that makes it extra good for us, but because it’s a child growing up in the world, learning new things every day and fascinated by it all. Anyways, there’s no movie except in our minds of Sophia chasing that balloon, kicking it away from herself, chasing it further and laughing continuously, but there ought to be.

The time when my parents are supposed to leave is almost here, and it’s like it sneaked up on me. I don’t want them to go. It’s going to be really rough on Sophia too, I think. She’s grown accustomed to seeing them every day, to going back in their section of the house for visits. Sometimes she takes my father by the hand and just leads him around the house, showing him her toys and things, pointing to her beloved atlas (another rescue from the old house) or her bears or random things. He always drops whatever he’s doing to go with her, and it’s so sweet.

OK, so I don’t know how much more time I have to write on this today, so to make sure I don’t forget what I was going to say I’m making yet another list of things to write about. Think of it as stuff to look forward to reading about!

• song enjoyment (deep and wide, old McDonald)
• bear going to daycare daily
• cualcotel progress
• hop on pop chase game
• stinky socks game
• politics and war (maybe, if i feel like ranting)
• links? that would be novel, i don’t do that much (maybe bookcrossing and swappingtons)