Temper Tantrums Run in the Family

Seriously, Terrible Twos? That's the best description? I think something like Torturous Twos or You'll Want to Drug Yourself Enough to Skip the Twos or even Please Dear God Strike Me Deaf Until 2010 Twos. I subscribe to the "Strike me Deaf" thing because I think I could cope if I could not hear, "Mama, Mama, Mama, AHHHH!!".

Cayton has been testing me AND asserting her independence all at once. I'm pretty good with standing my ground, but the independence thing is really eating my lunch. It's not that I'm all sad because she's growing up and doing her own thing. Oh no, if only. No, the problem for me is that she wants to do everything herself and she has NO skills. While she can put together a jigsaw puzzle, sing about 100 songs start to finish and in tune, count to 15 (in English) and 10 (in Spanish), knows her seasons, and is pretty good with a fork and spoon, girl cannot put her pants on right. Nine times out of ten, the shoes go on the wrong foot and sleeves are an instant tantrum. If she'd just chill and let me take care of the morning routine it would take about 45 seconds start to finish. But, Cayton's method for dressing and grooming takes about 30 minutes not including temper tantrums (hers and mine).

Brief reenactment, our house 7:30 am:

"Blake, Blake, Blake, Blake, Blake, Blake..." This is me trying to wake Blake up so that he will go upstairs and get Cayton out of bed. He has no hearing in the morning and gets really pissed if I yell, so I do a pretty good impression of the teacher from Ferris Beuller. He finally rolls over and says, "huh?" as if he has no idea why I'd be trying to wake him up.

Ten seconds later, the monitor erupts as Cayton surmises that Daddy is here to wake her up and she can therefore throw a pretty good fit. They stalk downstairs, Cayton asleep on Blake's shoulder along with Edward the giant bunny rabbit and the green blankie.

First step is to get Cayton to sit on the Big potty. This is where independence starts to ruin the morning. She is the only one allowed to put the potty seat in place and then she has to scale the potty to actually sit on it. I think she'd rather fall off and crack her head than have either one of us help her.

She takes a bath and then it really starts, The Battle Royal of Putting on Clothes. This is absolutely my least favorite part of the day. If I weren't pregnant, I'd use one of my flying anxiety Xanax pills to get through this, no doubt. I start to put her pull up on her, nope she has to do it. But, her process starts with her rolling around on our bed, then looking to see which characters are on her diaper, then she puts the pull up on backwards, I tell her so, she pulls it off, starts to put it on again (backwards), I step in because I can't stand it, then screaming.

Since I outweigh her by a few pounds, I usually strong arm her and get the drawers on her. She is terribly offended, not to mention startled by my iron strength and she takes a moment to really roll out the "you hurt me AND my feelings, you are a terrible Mama" routine. This involves some ginormous tears and a lip pucker that could possibly go into the Guiness Book of Records for the distance that she can stick her lip out.

Then, Good God Almighty, it's jeans time. I hand her the jeans and the process is pretty much like the pull up but obviously the leg holes are longer. So, she puts them on and manages to get both legs in the same hole. So, we start over and of course I am not allowed to help no matter what. So, you can imagine how tough it is to stand back because it's pure mental torture to watch someone with unrefined motor skills trying to do something that you could do in about 1 second. You stand there watching, your own hands going through the motions, giving advice and you might as well just walk off. But what do I do? I tell her she put her jeans on wrong, she pulls them off, puts both legs in the same hole again, I step in to help because my OCD is too much, and then screaming. This time, it's both of us screaming and I think Blake has run off.

After jeans, it's shirt time and that goes a bit better because somewhat like the pull up, I use the strong arm technique and it works this time because it goes over her head and she can't put up much of a fight. By the time she can really start in on me, the shirt is on. As for hair and shoes, I've long since called Uncle on that and I just run a quick comb through the hair and let her take care of the shoes. If she's OK with wearing her shoes on the wrong feet, then so am I. Who am I to judge?