MDG Summer of Crazy

The summer was hard for MDG. We're still not completely sure why. I suppose that the 18-21 month time frame is pretty overwhelming for babies. They're trying to talk, and failing, They're trying and failing to do just about everything independently, and no one knows what the heck they want.

this day apparently, he wanted an entire tub of aquaphor

At Big Sis's house, there was no pack n play or high chair, so he got thoroughly confused. Papa H started lying down with him on the air mattress for every nap and bedtime, which got him crazy spoiled. Then he got to sit on someone's lap at every meal, which got him even more spoiled. Throw in a couple tantrums and this mama was about to lose her mind.

Everyone there knew MDG as this happy-go-lucky fun kid, and then here I was with a little monster. Yes, we understood it was a phase, we aren't totally clueless, but the phase was passing slower than it had with PDG.

I don't think it helped that there was no daycare structure to his day. I tried the Camp Nicole approach, but things are always different with mom than with acaregiver. At church, when I tried to drop him off with his brother in Nursery, he flipped out. Lots of babies cry, and they're used to it, but this was the sort of irrational screaming that meant they came and found me to say either I stay with him down there or he'd have to stay with me in my Sunday School classes.

that's the wax from one of hundreds of cheese snacks we ate this summer

When it came to meal time, he mostly just wanted cheese. Not much else. Maybe yogurt. Some milk. Really he would've been happy if we just bought a cow for the backyard to be his own personal dairy supplier.

No matter what we were doing, he needed me. At the park, in the living room, walking from the van to the house. If I wasn't touching him there was a good chance he was crying. Even around other people he loved.

When he climbed out of his crib I thought I'd lost my mind. PDG never did that. PDG never did anything I mentioned in this post. PDG was this weirdly easy kid that I thought was a typical kid and now I had a typical kid that felt like an off-the-charts psycho. Had I changed? Was I a totally different parent? Could I fix it?

Nope, nope, nope. Turns out, kids are different. I should know this. Big Sis reminds me of how different she and I are all the time. My parents probably turned to each other almost daily back in the mid 80's saying, wow, Nicole sure is different than Big Sis.

At any rate, we did survive it. He's now back sleeping through the night in his toddler bed. He doesn't try to run out of the room purely because he's awake; instead he lies there patiently with PDG until given the go ahead to come out. He sits in his own grown-up chair at the table where he doesn't eat everything, but he does eat more than in July. He'll stay in Nursery with his brother as long as I disappear ninja-style while he's distracted. If he cries, he can be calmed with some snuggles.

The only battle still remaining is probably the scariest: the car seat. He unbuckles himself. We thought he was mad about me still keeping him backwards, so I gave in last week, two months short of turning two. And yet, still, I found myself pulling off the highway a few days ago because PDG (my resident whistle-blower) announced MDG was being unsafe. Sure enough, happy as a lark he'd still chosen to undo the clip and couldn't put it back together himself. If he were older I could reason with him better. As it is, it's tough to find the balance of scary enough discipline to fit how scary the consequence of this could be. I have no idea if I'm handling it right at all.

I'm hopeful, in the end, that this is part of a stage too. One that ends super duper fast.