Tantrums Daily

2003/02/12

11:04

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)