Tantrums

For some weeks now, Norah has been fine tuning her tantrum mechanisms. Tantrums aren't something we've had a great deal of experience with so far. Despite the fact that he's starting to get a little bit of a temper, Gabe has really never descended into the realm of tantrum yet. He doesn't kick and scream or throw things when he gets angry or upset. Probably that is a blessing.

But Norah seems hell-bent on evening out the score by throwing double the number of tantrums.

Typically, whenever we do something or the world presents her with something that she doesn't like, her answer is to collapse to the ground, throw her head back, and start crying. Usually, she starts crying because she never thinks to look where she's throwing herself down and she either sat down, with a pronounced exclamation point of a thud, onto a toy, or she's tossed her head down onto the hardwood floor (or another toy, a book, a piece of furniture, or the wall--really, anything is an option and she's explored most of them several times). But I'm pretty sure she'd cry even if she didn't have any actual reason to. It seems to be her go-to form of communication.

Typical woman, really.

Ha, ha! Generalizations are fun. Especially when they're true.

Anyway, she usually stops once I remove myself from the room. As Libby's folks are fond of saying, "Sometimes you just have to take your sails out of their wind." I love that saying, and I do it frequently. I'm not what you'd call very tolerant of tantrums. I value my own emotional control and get, well, uncomfortable and frustrated when presented by such blatant attempts at manipulation through emotional outbursts. Or I just sit there and laugh at them--which only tends to make them angrier, another reason it's best for me to leave.

Until now, though, I've not really been able to get one recorded. I never have the camera close to catch the collapse and subsequent head bonk--and that, really, is the best part--but usually, by the time I get the camera, she's moved on from tantruming to either flat out crying or she's given up and gotten over herself--neither of which makes very good video.

Today, though, I was able to catch some of her tantrum. Both she and Gabe were turds this afternoon for their naps. Gabe, unfortunately, has discovered that he can play up in his room, and if he stays quiet enough, I can't hear him messing around on the monitor. So he's taken to playing in his bed and not napping. This is fine, really. Ideal, actually, if it's done properly. All I REALLY want is a couple hours every day where I can eat lunch without being pestered, watch a show without having to turn the closed captioning on so I can follow the dialogue, or catch up on the blog or emails. If he can give me that that time without sleeping, I'm OK with that, especially since it might lead to him sleeping in past 6:00 in the morning.

But he doesn't usually JUST play quietly. He hasn't quite mastered it yet. He will do it for fifteen or twenty minutes, then he'll take to doing something noisy, which runs the risk of waking Norah. Today, he did just that.

So, I had two awake kids. Since Norah was already awake, she decided to have a poop, which only made her crankier, so I had to go upstairs and sort things out. I brought her down, changed her diaper and let her reset for a half hour (and told Gabe to stop screwing around because he woke up Norah and go to sleep--he eventually did). After that, I brought her up, she fussed for another twenty minutes, but went to sleep. Only to wake up again thirty minutes later crying.

Now, I have no explanation for why she still does this, but she still does as often as not. She responds to waking up like a newborn, shrieking and crying as soon as she opens her eyes. If Gabe is already awake, I usually try to let her fuss for a little while in the hopes that she'll eventually sort her own problems out (usually she doesn't), but if he's sleeping, I try to get up there as quickly as possible so I don't have two awake kids on my hands.

When I got in there, she stopped crying, and I brought her downstairs. Once downstairs, I fetched her a juice cup and handed it to her. She looked at the juice cup, back up at me, then started bawling. Wailing and bawling and, within about five seconds, falling backwards and flailing about randomly. She started kicking her feet at any toy or stuffed friend that was close. She picked a few toys up and half threw them away from her. And then she started flopping.

That's what I got on the video. Crying and flopping.

Unfortunately, stupid blogger won't let me upload it (which I fail to understand since Google is connected to youtube, and I'm not having ANY problems uploading it to youtube--stupid Google, sort out your damn blog site!), so here's a link to the video on youtube.

Shortly after I finished with the video, I left the room and, surprise surprise, she stopped crying.

Kids.