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But in personality, I think she’s an awful lot like me as a kid.

There’s the funny similarities, like the fact that all she wants to do in the water is float. Or that she can often be found spinning in a circle and singing to herself.  She seems to be like me from a parenting perspective, too - pretty easy, big into rules, kind of sensitive to perceived slights or sadness.

We’re at the beginning of our annual Midwestern pilgrimage right now. Hauling our stuff all over Illinois and Wisconsin to visit various family members. This weekend was the yearly family reunion for my dad’s side, and it was tons of fun as always.  A pool, lots of young kids, silly games, junk food at every turn. Good times. Unfortunately, M had to stay home since he really didn’t have enough vacation days to join us.

Yesterday, in the middle of the Reunion Insanity, Rebecca woke up from her nap crying hysterically.  I asked what was wrong, and she choked out, “I miss my daddy!” Oh, the heartbreaking wails.  Eventually she calmed down enough that we could call M and she could talk to him.  And that was when I heard the most striking echo of myself as a kid, through buckets of tears and loud sobs and a thick throat:

“I just want to go home.”

Oh, how many times I said that as a child.  I was an intense homebody. My mom would drop me off to play at a friend’s house, and the other mother would call an hour later, saying I was ready to be picked up.  The first week of first grade was constant tears.  My first time away at camp, age 10, was an epic disaster of daily letters, begging to come home.  Even my freshman year of college, I racked up enormous phone bills (OK, much of which was to my boyfriend at the time), and almost didn’t go back after Fall and Winter breaks. I transferred at the end of the year, and ended up going to school two miles from home.  The fact that I have now lived a full time zone away for more than 10 years is nothing short of a miracle, but I think even that is nearing its end.

So, when I heard Rebecca all but begging her Daddy to let her go home (again today), my heart broke. Not just because we’ll be here for almost two more weeks and I certainly want her to have a good time, but because I remembered so clearly what that felt like. That intense homesickness, that desperate need to be near the things and the people that I missed.

I feel badly that I’ve passed that trait on to my child.  It’s hard to feel that sad, and it took away from my ability to enjoy things like Girl Scout camp, and for sure kept me from making a real attempt to take advantage of my first year of college (even though transferring was ultimately the best decision and my second school was a perfect fit).

Thankfully, I know it gets better. I was able to go away to camp a few years later and I liked it. I traveled to Europe and had a great time. I moved to Boston and fell in love and started a family.

And, hey, I’m 31 years old and want to live closer to my mommy. So maybe that’s not all bad.

But in the meantime, I will try to be patient with her sadness and remember that feeling in the pit of my stomach, of just wishing I could be back home.  I will try to help her enjoy the times when we’re away, and not just count down the days until we go back.  And I’ll make sure she gets to talk to Daddy every single night.

I have been very lucky in the sense that neither of my kids have ever struggled with language.  They were both always comfortably in the average range for their age, and sometimes seemingly well above average.  They have good vocabularies and are generally very easy for most people to understand when they speak.  Their pronunciation has improved as they’ve gotten older, with no intervention from us. While I do make it a point to pronounce words correctly when I talk to them or repeat back what they’ve said, I don’t do it in a pointed, correcting kind of way.  I just talk. That’s it.

They have also shown an interest in trying new words just for the fun of it, and both are consciously trying to pronounce “L” and “TH” correctly, which is pretty neat to watch.

In the meantime, they have a few consistent mispronunciations that I have actually stopped my husband from attempting to correct.  I just love them so much, and I know they’ll be fixed on their own in time.  So, for the moment, I just want to revel in them.

coconuts = “poconuts”

backpack = “pack-pack”

umbrella = “bwing-gwew-wa” (it’s a weird one, but they both say it the same way)

remote = “ma-rote”

kite = “tite”

And, best of all, Daniel’s rendition of the chorus to “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” from Mary Poppins.

Wet’s go fwy a tite

Up fwoo da highest heights

Wet’s go fwy a tite

And send it snoring.

Up fwoo de atmosphere

Up where de air is cwear.

Oh, wet’s go…. fwy a tite!

So, what are your all-time favorite toddler mispronounciations?

We’ve had our share of those in the past that sounded lewd, especially when Daniel was obsessed with flags and would SHOUT anytime he saw a flagpole, “Flag on a stick! Flag on a stick!”  Except, well… the “l” in flag was dropped, and the “st” in stick came out more like a “d.”  It was alarming.

I almost don’t know where to start.  I feel like my blood pressure is through the roof, my heart is racing, and I’m liable to fall down in a heap at any moment.  Such is parenting Daniel at age 2 years, 11 months.

When he is good, he is very very good.  He is curious and inquisitive, always asking how something works, what we’re going to do next, and “what kind of thing” is his version of “why” in the realm of never-ending toddler questioning. He is incredibly charming. If he is so inclined, he can work a room like nobody’s business.  We’ve been out for lunch and had several waitresses fawning over him and people coming over from other tables to compliment him.  A barista at our local Starbucks is positively in love with him, and has started insisting I bring him in on their birthday next month.  He has delightful manners, lots of spontaneous “Mama, may I pweese have X?” and casual “oh, sanks” when you give him something.  He is funny and silly and bright and highly verbal and has a memory like a steel trap.

And sometimes I would like to clamp him in a steel trap.

Because the other side of Daniel is a complete psychopath.  There are scarcely words to describe it.  Defiant and contrary doesn’t even begin. When he’s in a mood, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say he spends about 50% of his day in this kind of mood, he is nothing short of a nightmare.  Picking fights over everything, from what to have for breakfast to putting the toilet paper in the toilet. I’m not kidding.  Sometimes it’s a pursed face, a pout, angry eyebrows. Silence. Daring me.  I ask him to do something. He covers his eyes with his hands, face still angry.  I count to 1. Staring me down.  I count to 2. A shrieked “NO!” and a stomped foot. That’s three, into time out.

My kids have always handled time outs pretty well.  Very often I could just send them and they’d walk there themselves. They almost never got out before I told them to.  Sometimes there was crying, but not always.

Now?  Now, with Daniel, it’s another way to test me.  “NO! I DON’T WANT A TIME OUT!” He gets up. I put him back. He stays there, but lashes out. Hits anything in reach – the chair, the door, a book.  Screams and yells at the top of his lungs. Sometimes just an angry “AAHH!”  Sometimes a positively furious “NO!”

I ignore it.  If he’s in his time out and not destroying anything or hurting anyone, I ignore it because I know he just wants to further engage me in another fight.  The screaming continues well after the timer beeps and I (as quietly and calmly as I possibly can) tell him he may get down. He keeps right on screaming.

And then, as quickly as the nastiness begins, the psycho switch flips and he walks out. “Mommy, what are you making?”, he asks with wonder and curiosity and reverence.  I tell him I’m making lunch.  “Oohh.  Peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”  Yep.  “Ooohhh.  Sank you, Mommy.”

Literally one sentence, one second to the next.  He flips from having a complete temper tantrum to back to his normal self.  I have emotional whiplash from the back and forth.  Because it goes back in the other direction just as fast. Sometimes I know what is likely to set him off (naptime, OMFG), and sometimes it’s a complete shock.

We were in Starbucks this morning, I gave the kids a warning that it was almost time to go home.  Daniel responds with, “oh, OK! I’m ready to go now.”  Tosses his chocolate milk in the trash, gleefully shouts “see you later!” to the entire staff, and practically skips out the door.  I ask him to hold my hand while we cross the parking lot, and BAM.  “I DON’T WANT TO GO HOME! I DON’T WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND!  WAAAAAHHHHH!”  Bucks in the carseat so I can’t get the seat belt on. Shouts at his sister.  Get home, and he refuses to take the seat belt OFF.  More crying. Another disastrous time out.  Another freaky switch back to normal behavior.  Back and forth and back and forth, all day long.

There are people who meet him and think I must be crazy.  What a delightful child you have! He’s so sweet! So funny! So smart! So charming! But I know.  I know it can, and will, turn on a dime.

I am completely, emotionally, mentally, and physically drained.  I try and try not to lose my temper. I try to stay calm, stay quiet, not engage with the fight-picking and power struggles.  I try to be consistent and predictable.  I try not to hold a grudge from the awful times and to encourage the good ones instead of launching into a tirade about how awful he was behaving and why it’s driving me over the edge. When he flips back to nice-Daniel, I try to act happy and pile on the good attention and compliment his nice manners.

It almost goes without saying that sometimes I do a whole lot better than others.  Sometimes I don’t do very well at all.  Sometimes I yell. Sometimes I slam a door.  More than I’d really care to admit. It’s not pretty.  But I try.

I’m at a loss, to be honest.  I’m not sure where to go next. I don’t know how to get rid of this insanely bipolar behavior.  If there’s an effective punishment to be had, I’m not exactly sure what it is. (Did I mention he’s become a retaliatory urinator? Yes, intentional peeing when he’s extra pissed off and I send him to his room.)  I’m not sure how to reward the good behavior enough for it to have an effect but without going overboard.  But it’s awful. I re-read this post and know that I’m not even doing justice to the insanity.  M and I sometimes just stare at each other with our mouths open, wondering what the hell just happened.

I know, from reading blogs of some of you moms with slightly older kids and talking to friends, that this is pretty well within the realm of “normal” behavior for this age.  I know that the testing limits is developmentally appropriate.  But, alas, that knowledge does not stop me from wanting to smack the taste out of his mouth, and we are NOT a physical-discipline family.  I just want more time with my sweet, sweet boy who is so funny and so smart and so delightful.  But even when that sweet boy appears, I’m still on edge. Waiting for the other shoe to drop (or for it to be picked up and thrown on the floor in a fit of rebellion).

SERENITY, NOW!

The kids were initially excited – a cast member dressed as Tinker Bell rides a zip line down Main Street to start the show via her magic wand.  Rebecca was thrilled.  And then, the first BOOM.  She was so hysterical and clung so tightly to my mother-in-law’s neck, it is going down as near legend.  Daniel might not have cried, but he most definitely hid in M’s arms and only occasionally peeked out between his fingers.  In the months that followed, the kids will happily retell the story about Tinker Bell, the pretty colors, and the VERY SCARY BOOMS.  “We were scared,” the story always ends.

I had no intention of taking them to see any fireworks this Fourth of July.  Being the middle of summer, it doesn’t get dark until quite late these days.  Not only were fireworks already established as SCARY, they were also entirely too late.

We spent most of the Fourth in the car.  We drove down to Connecticut for a family party.  3+ hours down, 3 hours at the party, 3+ hours back.  Naps were totally messed up (Becca slept 30 min as we arrived at the party, Daniel slept 2.5 hours at 6pm on the way home), and it was an all-around long day.

We had to drive into Boston to drop off my sister-in-law and her boyfriend, and there were crowds of people headed towards the river to watch the fireworks and hear the Pops.  I tuned the radio to the live broadcast and heard the beginning of the 1812 Overture (woo for real artillery!) as we headed on the final stretch towards home.

All of a sudden, from the back seat, came an overtired but impassioned plea: “I wanna see the fireworks!”

Huh?

Both of them.  BEGGING to see fireworks.  As we got onto the highway, we could see a few towns’ displays in the distance. The big Boston show didn’t start for nearly an hour.  And suddenly M remembered the perfect viewing spot.  The roof of the Tufts University library (M used to work at Tufts) has a perfect line of sight to downtown Boston.

There were tons of people there (lots of summer school students – suddenly realizing how long ago 19 was…), eagerly awaiting the start.  The minutes creeped by and the kids got loopier and more tired, but we waited.

Finally, they started, and we threw the kids up on our shoulders so they could see above the crowd.  It was perfect.  Easy enough for the kids to see (I couldn’t see a thing), but far enough away that you couldn’t hear any of the booms.

The kids only lasted a few minutes before they decided they were done, though of course there were some indecisive meltdowns on the way to the car, including Rebecca moaning pathetically, “I miss the fireworks!”

Next year, my dear.  Next year we’ll see them again.

It was completely unplanned, hours past their bedtime, and from an objective standpoint, probably a terrible idea.

I’m so glad we did it.

Went up to get him from nap, he took a solid 2+ hours.  Walk in, strange smell. Diaper in hand.

“Daniel, why did you take off your diaper?”

“Because I had to pee.”

“Where did you pee?”

“In my bed.”

Indeed. The whole bed was completely soaked. The diaper was dry as a bone.

What could I even do? The pee was cold, the incident had passed. The morning, the week, had been so intensely frustrating and draining, I had nothing left in the tank. If I got upset about this, it was clear I was going to straight-up flip my lid, possibly burst into tears.  So I complimented him on knowing that he needed to pee, and suggested that the next time he felt that way, he could just go to the bathroom across the hall.  I mean, at least he recognized he needed to go?

Good lord.

Daniel is trying to drop his nap.

It’s a highly intentional act, consistent in tone to other behavior/control/defiance issues we’re dealing with.  Over the course of the last week, in particular, he has become very conscious of the fact that he can control whether or not he goes to sleep at naptime.  For the first time in two and a half years, he is seriously protesting taking a nap.  “I’m not tired.” “I don’t need to sleep.” “I don’t want to take a rest.” “I’m all out of energy to sleep.” “My yawn says that it’s time to play outside.”

It’s a nap shitstorm over here.  You’ll excuse the profanity, and understand that I’m actually showing a lot of restraint right now.  Between the skipped naps, the heat and humidity, and the lack of central air conditioning, the only words I actually want to speak are of the four-letter variety.  I’m trying to hold it together in front of the kids, but with only moderate success.

Every day, I wonder how bad it’s going to be.  If he outright skips the nap, he can seem somewhat agreeable for a little while. But the truth is that he’s a ragged edge, just waiting to snag on something and completely lose it.  That nearly always happens by dinnertime.

If he messes around for an hour and a half (or two hours, OMFG), and then falls asleep, I end up having to wake him around 4:30, just so he’ll have some chance of going back to sleep at bedtime.  That is, universally, a nightmare. He’s nothing short of horrid when you wake him up. Hysterical sobbing, can’t listen to anything, pitches a fit about everything.  A bad nap is actually worse than no nap at all.

And once in what seems like a blue moon, he goes up there and falls asleep within 30-45 minutes, takes a nice two-hour nap, and is the delightful child that is hiding under the nap-beast I see most days.

When I talk to people about the difficulty we’re having, it’s amazing to me how many people leap to the conclusion that it must be time to give up the nap.  To which I would like to say, HELL TO THE MOTHERFUCKING NO. (sorry, couldn’t keep that one in.)

Yes, maybe the nap is in the beginning stages of phasing out.  It has to happen sometime.  I have had my moments where I wonder if it’s time.

But then I watch the behavior. Only on the days when he has a “normal” nap is he the happy, delightful version of himself for any extended period of time.  Yes, that sometimes means he sings for a while at night, but I’ll take it if he’s actually happy and friendly during his waking hours.  Sometimes he fools you, holding it together pretty darn well when he skips the nap.  But more often than not, it’s a disaster waiting to happen.

Today, I thought I was a shoo-in.  Took them swimming for over an hour, which is usually guaranteed to wear them out.  Plus, it’s quite hot, which always makes me more sleepy. Put them down right on time (sometimes nap gets pushed late, and though he falls asleep a little sooner, it’s the messed-up-nap shitstorm as described above).  Yeah. Daniel didn’t sleep AT ALL, and Rebecca (who often takes herself up for naptime) only slept an hour.  KILL ME.

For those who say he’s just not tired?  Guess what he did for the first time in MONTHS when we were coming back from the mall (woo, air conditioning)?  Fell asleep in the car.  And just for some added fun, peed through his shorts (screw you, potty training).

I’m not sure there’s much of a solution to this one.  I can set up rules and boundaries for that time I designate as “naptime,” but I cannot force him to go to sleep. (Apparently using tranquilizers on toddlers is “frowned upon.”)  I know that I’m right.  I know that, most days, he absolutely does need that nap.  But being right isn’t worth much at the moment. It doesn’t get us any closer to a well-rested child. Unfortunately, I think I just have to wait this one out.

In the meantime, I’m not exactly the picture of maternal patience. As all of my mom friends know, the kid not napping is a major source of stress and barrier to getting things accomplished.  When he’s up there messing around, I feel like I can’t even go upstairs.  Can’t take a shower, can’t mess around on my sewing machine. Can’t even sit downstairs and turn on the TV at an audible volume, because he insists on turning off his white noise machine.

Oof. Can a girl get a frosty beverage over here? Stat?

While I know there are plenty of kids, boys especially, who train at an older age, I was just plain tired of changing Daniel’s diaper.  It was clear to me that he was capable of using the potty, if perhaps a little under-motivated.  And, with preschool starting up in the fall, I know they would prefer that he be trained, so I at least wanted to make another serious attempt before then.

Sunday night, I looked at my calendar for the week, and then for the next six.  I realized we are completely between activities at the moment, and had literally nothing on the calendar for this week.  But, after this week, things start to really pick up again.  New classes, big outings, travel, the whole nine yards.  It was very obvious that this was the biggest stretch of free time we will have until probably mid-August.  Time to suck it up, Mama.

And so, this week has been Potty Boot Camp, Take 2 (or whatever “take” I’m on now, lord only knows).  The first day was, in a word, discouraging.  What bothered me the most is that the accidents didn’t seem to phase him in the least.  Especially the poop ones!  And there is nothing quite so delightful as trying to remove and clean a pair of toddler-sized underwear full of poop.  Wow.

But I changed my reward strategy this time.  No M&M jar (not only ineffective, but AWFUL for me to have them around), but a sticker chart.  Earn five stickers (and yes, I’ll give them out for as little as about half a teaspoon worth of pee in the potty), and you get a special treat.  Popsicle, ice cream, Trader Joe’s star cookies.  Your choice.  And to try to keep Rebecca invested in the process (and not resentful of the attention Daniel was getting), she got a treat when he earned his five stickers, too.  My little mama-girl thought it was great that she could “help teach Daniel to use the potty.”

And…

Progress. Dare I say, some enthusiasm.  Initially, there was certainly happiness over the stickers and the potential for popsicles, but a notable lack of disappointment when an accident would cause him to not earn a Thomas or Cars sticker.  But in the last day or two, I feel like I’ve noticed a subtle shift.  He seems to be shifting from “poop anywhere, anytime, in the undies, who cares?” to “save it for the naptime diaper.”  In my world, that’s a notable improvement, and one I can totally work with.  And, though he might sometimes poop in the diaper, I’ve noticed it suddenly staying dry…  This morning, as I was downstairs psyching myself up for an early-morning run, I hear a door and footsteps.  I waited.  A few minutes later, down comes Daniel, looking for me.  Pajama bottoms and (dry) diaper in hand, informing me he had gotten up to use the potty.

I could care less that it was 45 minutes before his Good Nite Lite was scheduled to turn yellow, that was a HUGE freaking breakthrough.

Other accomplishments this week include staying dry at: Trader Joe’s (where we have an unfortunate history of Daniel and poop accidents), the MOVIE THEATER (he sat through the entirety of Toy Story 3, told me he needed to use the potty with two minutes to go, and actually waited for the credits before we bolted for the bathroom!), and an entire morning at the playground.

It really feels like we’re turning a corner, thankfully.  And, to be fair, I think my mindset is different this time around.  The first time I did boot camp with Daniel, I had done the same with Rebecca only a couple of weeks earlier.  For one thing, she was relatively easy to train and I was able to back off of her relatively quickly, once I could tell she “got it.”  Daniel seemed to “get it,” and then had an enormous backslide about a week later.  I couldn’t handle all of that mess and the inability to go about our usual business, especially combined with the fact that Rebecca, while pretty reliable, was still fairly high-maintenance on the potty.

This time around, I barely have to think about Rebecca at all. She’s almost entirely self-sufficient on the potty and, despite a strange uptick in overnight accidents, is very low-maintenance.  Not only do I have a bit more energy to focus on Daniel, but I have also shifted the mindset and know that I’m going to have to stay a lot more proactive with him for a lot longer.  While I’ve noticed major improvements, he’s always been the kind of kid who gets very easily distracted and, when involved in one thing, kind of tunes everything else out.  So, if I’m constantly nearby and asking him if he needs to use the potty, and asking how the undies are doing (“clean and dry!”), he’s good about stopping and telling me.  If I leave him to do his own thing for a while, that’s when I’m more likely to see an accident.  Forgive the comparison, but it reminds me a line about house-training puppies in a book I read when I first got our dog: “If they have an accident, you’ve given them too much freedom, too soon.”  And while there are certainly more complexities to potty-training a kid than housebreaking a dog, there’s an aspect of that that rings pretty true.

Though, seriously, crate-training was awfully effective. Are you sure I can’t do that with toddlers?

I know this isn’t over.  I know he’s not going to be the same as Rebecca.  But I am cautiously optimistic that we are on a good path, and I’m very much hoping that the move to underwear is a permanent one.

A few days and a few thousand frequent flier miles later, we were on our way.  My aunt got it into her head that she wanted the whole family to be together for a few days, and knew my mom was missing the kiddos (and me, I guess, but I’m OK playing second-fiddle to my children).  Plus, the one sister (out of seven siblings) who does not live in Illinois was coming for a visit.  I even ended up on her flight, giving her quite the surprise as she hustled down the aisle of the plane.

From that point forward, the kids were in cousin-heaven.

And we shocked the hell out of my mom when she came to get her sister and niece and nephew at the airport.

The entire visit was a crowd. Four of my mom’s six siblings (plus my grandmother) live within a two-block radius of my mom’s house.  Needless to say, they congregate frequently and in large numbers.

We were all over the place.  Playground, out for breakfast, meeting cousins.  We took a trip downtown to Millennium Park and heard the Chicago Symphony play Vivaldi, marveled at the Bean, and splashed in the fountain.

We stayed out entirely too late every single night, but had a blast.

And then it was time to come home.

Had to wake the kids from nap to go to the airport.

Line of severe thunderstorms moving into the area.

Daniel complaining that he “doesn’t feel very good.”

Delayed by an hour before we got on the plane, then almost two more hours waiting on the tarmac before takeoff.  Over-tired kids. Daniel’s throat hurts, so he refuses to swallow and soaks his shirt with drool.  For as confident as I am about traveling solo with my kids, this flight was an absolute disaster.  We did not make many new friends, by any means.  Daniel finally dozed off on my lap as we landed (after 11pm), but woke up before we got off the plane and wailed all the way through the terminal, most of the time at baggage claim, and half of the drive home.  At least by then I had M to help, but I was on the verge of tears, myself.

I seem to have some kind of Chicago-to-Boston travel curse.  Nearly every time I have to fly back to Massachusetts, something highly unpleasant happens with my flight.  An insane percentage of delays and cancellations, including multiple trips that were extended by a full day due to flight problems.

I can explain part of it by the fact that, when I’m booking the flights, it always seems like a good idea to book a later flight so that we can have extra time to our visit. WRONG.  BAD IDEA.  As painful as it can be to get up at 5AM (or earlier) for a crack-of-dawn flight, I have to say that they nearly always go smoothly.  Too much backs up by the end of the day.

But, seriously, there’s still a curse at work.  Guess I’m not meant to leave Chicago, huh?

At any rate, our surprise trip was generally a blast.  The kids did incredibly well with all of the extra people and late bedtimes and general craziness.  There was some overwhelmed tantruming, but not as much as you might expect.  All in all, a success.  I only wish it didn’t end on such a sour note.

What a difference from the first and second years…

Back tomorrow with more crazy travel tales.