A Day With Kiddo

There is no true manual when it comes to raising kids, especially when you are not raising your typical child. As a mother, I went in assuming I knew most of what I needed to know and can't say that I truly felt overwhelmed by the thought of having to raise a child. No, in fact, I felt rather comfortable.

And then I had my son...

You see, everything I knew - or thought I knew, rather - came into question. All the things I said I wouldn't do, I found myself doing and I found myself being unable to do lots of the things that I had wanted to do.

You see, a typical day with kiddo will often go like this...

Kiddo will wake. For the longest time, the way we (and the neighbors!) would be informed that he was awake was by him screaming at the top of his lungs. Now, I am not a morning person by ANY means and being woken by a screaming child was NOT a good way to start the day. I let the Mr. handle getting him out of bed so I wouldn't strangle the child while I gave myself a few extra minutes to recover and drag myself out of bed. Luckily, for the past couple of weeks, he has stopped screaming that way. I still have to drag myself out of bed and will still grumble and groan until after I've had my coffee but, at least, I am not wanting to strangle anyone first thing in the morning.

Now, quickly after having gotten kiddo out of bed, we'd often know the direction the day was going to head in just by kiddo's face. If he is smiley and has bright eyes, we know we should have an average day. If he is very smiley and is chatty, this is the kind of day to jump on if you want to do anything remotely out of the ordinary. However, if he frowns a lot and is almost silent, you've been warned, tread carefully - very carefully. Some days he wakes up looking very agitated, eyes darting all over the place and he just seems ‘off’.

When he was younger, I was pretty insistent that his diaper be changed immediately after getting up as it was full from the night. Since kiddo insists on having a large cup of milk as soon as he is on his two feet, we ended up with pee everywhere if this wasn't done. Unfortunately, most of the time, this really set off the kiddo as he absolutely had no interest in having it done at that moment. Usually, any attempt to change it then resulted in a full on war with the kid, complete with screaming, kicking, diapers flying, tempers flaring, and a grumpy Mr. by the time I came downstairs. We are lucky now that he is older as he can retain his pee and it is less urgent to change his diaper immediately after getting out of bed.

Now, as I said, kiddo would normally insist on having his cup of milk at this point. This would be indicated by him pointing angrily at his cup, him shaking the baby gate angrily, or him repeating 'cuppa' repeatedly until you were filling it. At this point, if you had grabbed the green cup and rinsed it thinking you could fill that one, you were either scolded angrily or would see your offer of milk completely rejected with the kiddo standing there, arms crossed, while his angry glare informed you of your wrongdoing. Blue cup. Blue cup is for milk. These days, it seems the milk has been replaced with making coffee. Yes, that is right, our 2.5 year-old makes our coffee. He seems happy enough now to wait for his milk so he can drink it while we drink out coffee - and this is only because we've absolutely refused to give him a coffee of his own. Despite our best intentions, we often leave our empty cups on the table and he promptly licks our cups clean of any drop of coffee that was left behind...

When it comes to things like making coffee, we have to think it through carefully. Every step you allow him to do once, is a step he'll insist on doing. Every. Single. Time. In fact, the whole reason he's making coffee here is because he helped make coffee at his aunt's house and insisted on making coffee here from that point on. The whole thing is a process practically set in stone. It needs to be done the same way every time and something as simple as my presence makes him nervous as the routine has been set between him and his father. So, right now, he cannot quite open the cabinet where the cups are held so he is happy enough to allow the Mr. to hand him the cups. It used to be okay for the Mr. to put the cups on the table and fill the cream there but I think the kiddo now carries the cups to the counter and Mr. has to fill them there. I am not sure if kiddo is filling the cream yet or if he is still allowing his father to do this while kiddo gets the sugar. Kiddo will put the coffee pads in while the Mr. quickly (and rather discretely) corrects them before kiddo places the holder in the machine and starts the coffee. Any misstep can lead to him shutting down or throwing a fit. Inadvertently turn the machine on out of habit and you’ll be hearing it. We've absolutely refused to allow the kiddo to carry the coffee to the coffee table so he tends to hold the gate open while this is done. As long as you allow him to do something for everything you don't allow, you *might* just be okay.

Now, we've got our coffees ready so kiddo needs his milk. It used to be that we had to fill his cup in secret because any sight of the blue (regular milk) carton would send him into a screaming fit. The brown carton (chocolate milk) is what he drinks and this is the ONLY thing he'll drink in the morning so make sure you have it. Luckily, we've managed to get away with sneaking some chocolate syrup in his regular milk for emergencies. Nowadays, however, we no longer need to do this in secret and he has caught onto us and has accepted that we've been cutting his chocolate milk with regular milk. In fact, he often predicts which carton might be out so he'll go get a new one from the pantry even before you ask. And, since he has a cement truck which we've allowed him to fill with water himself, he has now understood that he can fill things and has been demanding to fill his own cup of milk since. Now, if we've made it this far without pissing him off by inadvertently doing something wrong, we can go enjoy our drinks. For example, we had a day where kiddo was still sleeping by the time the Mr. and I were downstairs. Without thinking, we had our coffee and kiddo woke up while we were drinking it so the Mr. went to get him. Well, what was a smile quickly turned into a frown and the kiddo went mute, suddenly refusing to talk to either of us until I realized our mistake. Once I told him I wanted another coffee and asked if he'd make one, he quickly said "Yeah!" and jumped off my lap to collect our cups to go make coffee. Luckily, he now understands that we can reuse our cups because the first time he faced that situation, he had a fit because it was against the rules as normally the first step to coffee making would be to take the cups out of the cabinet. On the other hand, I am still unable to refuse a coffee when I am not in the mood for one as this is absolutely against the 2-cup rule.

My partner usually takes Puck out at this point and kiddo will sit in the windowsill to watch. Kiddo often whines at this point but it's nothing really serious. Once that is done, it is time for Papa to head to work. This is always done the same way. Kiddo will be in my arms and he and I may argue about whether or not we need to turn the light on. Papa will give kiddo a kiss goodbye and kiddo will tell Papa that he has to kiss me too even before Papa has the time to do so. Once I get my kiss, kiddo will most oftentimes squeal with delight and then tell Papa to go. Kiddo will then proceed to tell Papa how to get out by pointing at the hooks and then the handle. We'll then stand in the doorway while kiddo looks out for the car lights to signal that the Mr. unlocked the car and kiddo will giggle and point at them. Kiddo will decide which way Papa will go. If the Mr. pulls out of the parking and drives in the 'wrong' direction, kiddo will not wave to Papa and he and I are going to have a really bad time, leaving me to deal with a tantrum. If the Mr. pulls out and drives in the right direction, kiddo will happily wave goodbye to Papa and we can then move on to the next step. I've never been so annoyed with a 2-way street before. Luckily, Mr. now simply asks kiddo which direction to head in and will just adjust his route when out of sight. This very thing happens if we are all in the car together as well. Kiddo will tell the Mr. which way to go. Sometimes, attempts to redirect will lead to him screaming. We ended up taking a detour to get somewhere in peace the other day. Ah, and don't make the mistake of thinking that kiddo will ask for Papa to drive the same way to work every day, he might change it on you just when you think you got the hang of it!

Nowadays, this is usually the easiest time to change his diaper. If you got him at the right moment, he'll run off ahead of you and pick out his diaper himself. We recently noticed that he had been piling some diapers off to the side and have now realized that he had noticed that the diapers come in 2 different patterns. He has now decided that he will ONLY wear the ones with the lions. His father has told me how to sneak the others on so I have taken to doing that. Pampers are way too expensive for him to be that picky! This now explains why he threw a fit the day I tried to put him in a diaper he hadn't picked... Once on his table, he will raise him bottom when asked so I could slip the new diaper under him and will lower himself again once that is done. I now have to wait for him to undo the diaper himself but I am allowed to help guide his hand if he struggles to find the tabs. However, if I inadvertently - or run out of patience when in a rush- undo them myself, I will cause a tantrum and I will be lucky to get the diaper on him at all after that. I have once actually needed to call his aunt to come over to help me because I could not get his diaper on at all. Unfortunately, his grandmother has also witnessed such an incident with his father. He may request a wipe to help wipe himself but usually he is okay with letting me finish off. At this point, we may argue about clothing. Usually, he will categorically refuse to wear any pants at all. If I need to get him into pants, I need to inform him of where we are going and IF he decides he is willing to go, he'll help me put his pants on. If not, I'll have to resort to forcing him into them. With tops, I often give him a choice between 2 different tops and allow him to choose. If it's for an appointment, I usually play it safe and pick something with McQueen as I know he usually has no objection. Lately, he had been absolutely refusing to wear a T-shirt without a long-sleeve under since that is how he had been wearing them. However, with the warm weather and the fact that he gets too hot easily, I insisted and put him in one. This led to a grumpy child who spent entirely too much time trying to stretch his sleeves from his elbows to his wrists but he quickly forgot about them once he was distracted with playing in the sand with his trucks. T-shirts are okay again now, thank goodness. Ironically, a while back, it was only T-shirts he would wear…

Now, this is where things get mucky...

I'm not one to plan a day. I simply go about my day doing things as and when I see fit. This is a huge issue for my little one who loves to have his day go about the same way every day. For example, if one day I do a fun craft with kiddo, he'll expect this to be done the next day as well, and the day after that, and on and on... If not, well, you guessed it, he'll have a tantrum. Thing is, this Mama ain't Mary Poppins and I am still struggling to find my balance with a kiddo, a house that feels like a mansion when it comes to maintenance, and a hoard of 4-legged family members who tend to conspire against me and bring me ever so much closer to insanity. Anything that changes during a day can be something that sets off the kiddo or that the kiddo really loves and tries to retain as part of the routine from then on.

The other problem I have is that everything we do brings in a certain level of stimulation – under stimulate and he acts up out of boredom and overstimulate and you have a disaster on your hands. Now, being the mom that I am, my whole concept of fun was based on a simple activity such as painting, being expanded on by bringing in all sorts of materials and textures to paint with. So, being that kiddo doesn't like finger painting because he doesn't like the feel of paint, I'd set the table and offer paint brushes, stamps, Q-tips, cotton balls, stickers, papers, etc. I didn't want to give him a predefined activity as I wanted him to enjoy discovering the effects that all these textures had on his painting. Upon seeing such a table, kiddo's eyes will always grow wide and he'll 'coo and ahhh' as he rushes over, dragging his blue chair behind him because that is the chair that is used for crafting. At that point, I might make the mistake of sitting on the couch so kiddo will promptly scold me and bring the other blue chair for me to sit on. Only then can we start with painting. For the first 10-15 minutes or so, we'll have great fun. Kiddo will try everything and he'll enjoy matching the tools to the paint color as he uses them. However, the further we go into it, the more you see that he's starting to act up. He's getting impatient and making demands that I cannot just allow and his temper flares. Eventually, the temper flares to the point that if I don't remove him, I can be sure that I'll be cleaning paint off all the surrounding surfaces in the area and I give up, putting the art supplies away. Now he's angry that I've put things away and he's not sure what to do with himself. Most of the time, he'll resort to running wildly around the room while screaming and throwing himself on the couch and/or on the pets. Not a good situation for anyone involved and I will scold him over and over again leading to tantrums and impatience on my end when I will finally decide enough is enough and I need to get him to bed for a nap. Usually by this point, there is little hope of anything going smoothly and we will have a full on battle of the wills. You've heard of the expression 'Shit hit the fan' but in my house, shit has literally gone flying across the room while I try to battle with my kid. While I usually emerge victorious - only because I am still just a bit stronger than the kid - I am not without my battle scars. Once the kid is in his bed, he usually screams at the top of his lungs and I just walk away, wondering if it's too early for a drink. He'll scream and scream - and I do mean scream. He screams enough that I am surprised no one has sent the police over. I wish I were kidding about that. Meanwhile, I often sit on the couch holding my head in my hands hoping he'll just fall asleep from exhaustion or sob, or both. Lots of times, I put on the webcam to watch him and shoved my headphones on, blasting music in my ears to shut him out. I tried everything but nothing works. Eventually, he normally falls asleep. It's only now that I understand that such activities caused this because of the over-stimulation that they brought on - not because he was being a brat with his demands - the over-stimulation is what causes him to become difficult in the first place.

I spend my days trying to find a balance between activities that allow my child to learn and grow and avoiding things that set him off. Even daily activities such as grocery shopping could become an issue. I cannot even begin to explain how challenging and exhausting that is and I cannot even begin to describe what it feels like when you don't even realize what the problem is - nor that there even is a problem to begin with. A clear example of this is that I had to learn the hard way how to garden with kiddo. For weeks, we had been collecting little pots of seeds to plant together as well as the other materials we needed to do so. I had been looking forward to starting a garden with kiddo for the longest time because I felt he'd really love being involved in it. With kiddo, the older the activity, the happier he is so this was one I truly felt he'd love and learn from. When the time finally came to plant the seeds, it was an absolute disaster. It started off great but despite having grouped the seeds according to their different needs, the minute the soil level needed to be different, tantrum. The minute I didn't need to take the individual seeds out of the packaging, tantrum. The minute we needed to skip a step for a certain seed, tantrum. The minute I used the wrong spoon to fill the pot, tantrum. It went on and on. In the hour that I tried to get those seeds planted, I had had a full day's worth of tantrums to deal with. Of course, this was one of those times when I removed him from the activity and decided to put him down for a nap so I had to deal with THAT whole battle as well. He kicked me so hard that day I was sure I’d be bruised. I got him to bed and I sobbed angrily as I planted the remaining seeds.

However, hindsight is a beautiful thing. This couldn't have worked because there simply were too many variables and steps for kiddo to process. Despite having considered giving up on the whole gardening idea, I knew that this was a good thing for us to do together and I made it a point to try it again - differently, this time. On a day that he seemed particularly happy, we gardened together. I set out the rules early on about where he could and couldn't go and, as long as he stayed within those boundaries, I wasn't going to bug him. Our front garden was FULL of weeds so he could pull out plants to his heart's content, with only a very few exceptions - which I had taken care to inform him about beforehand. I even managed to take him to the store. I told him where we were going and why and that got him excited. When I got there, things went well but, about halfway through, he started getting over-stimulated by all the colors and smells and so I cut it short, paid, and left. I immediately gave him lunch and then it was nap time. Unfortunately, he was already too over-stimulated to sleep and I had too much to do to stay with him so he didn't sleep. However, despite being unable to sleep, being in his room was soothing enough and he managed to play quietly while I worked on the things he couldn't help with. Once that was done, I got him out and we resumed working on the yard together. When he got bored with the weeds and started getting difficult, I took his trucks out and let him play in the dirt with them. Trucks are always an acceptable offering. I set out the plants but haven't planted them yet. I have now understood that, if given the opportunity, kiddo will try and determine their spot and that might not work, leading to tantrums. I also understand that moving them around will set him off. No, I now understand that if I am going to plant them with kiddo, their spot will have to be predetermined and the steps will have to be exactly the same for each of them for it to work.

Nap time has also become tricky. There was a time when he'd go nap relatively peacefully but kiddo suddenly decided he no longer needed to nap. Unfortunately, this is far from true. We have a real tyrant on our hands when he is too tired so there was no way I was going to just settle for that. After trying everything, I finally gave in and decided to take him to our bedroom and nap with him. This worked beautifully until I realized that not everything can just be put on pause and wait for us to get up from our nap. No, in fact, I have to leave for work soon after he goes down for his nap. This setup would not work... Trying a new tactic, I napped with him in his room. It's not ideal as I'd much prefer him to nap without needing me there but I am a step further with having managed to move him back into his own room. At least with him in his, I could possibly manage to sneak out quietly and head off for work. It's also really difficult because there are times when our schedule just conflicts with his nap time and we end up paying the price. Nap times are really getting quite difficult to deal with, honestly. I hope we can find the magic formula soon.

Not long ago, we were sick and because of this, we stayed in bed and I allowed him to watch his truck videos that he loves on my laptop after he had woken up from his nap. The next day, I struggled to get him out of bed. He wanted to watch his videos. I only managed to get him downstairs with the repeated promise that he could watch the videos on the couch. It took a lot of struggling and time to undo this. 

By the time evening comes, most of my day has usually been spent yelling, dealing with tantrums, bringing kiddo to his room to cool down numerous times, and just trying not to bash my head against the wall. Of course, there have been some good moments but they are often fleeting in nature. Oftentimes playtime starts off well but then kiddo gets upset about something and I just throw my hands up in the air and let him do his own thing. By the time 6pm comes, kiddo is often at the baby gate shaking it violently and demanding food. I’ll start cooking dinner but, ironically enough, despite kiddo demanding food, he’ll throw a fit because I am not paying him any attention and am ‘inaccessible’ to him. Luckily, when his father arrives, he quickly turns his attention to him and I find myself relieved not to have to deal alone any longer. Kiddo is almost always overly hyper when his father comes home and this often leads to more scolding as he tends to fall and hurt himself and/or our dog during those times. Once the food is on the table, he’ll demand every single condiment available so we have learned to avoid putting too much. We are also learning to remove everything that had been on the table. Anything like an apple will cause kiddo to shut down if we refuse it to him until after dinner. There are many times when kiddo is just too tired and not willing to cooperate during dinnertime so I send him out of the kitchen – sans food – until he calms down. I absolute hate arguing during dinnertime. Sometimes he’ll continue his screaming and then we’ll bring him up to his room but this usually results in even more screaming and a cold dinner for us.

Bedtime is my favorite and most hated part of the day. Again, there is a whole routine to be followed. Kiddo must take out his toothbrush and toothpaste himself. I am allowed to open the bag but I must let him do the rest. I may turn on the faucet but he must be the one to wet the toothbrush. I am then expected to hold the toothbrush while he squeezes out and entirely disproportionate amount of toothpaste. Once I have managed to put the extra toothpaste into the tube, I am allowed to brush his teeth and then he has to ‘finish’ brushing them himself. Then I turn on the faucet again and he’ll rinse off his toothbrush, give it a shake, and put the toothbrush and toothpaste back into the bag and then back into the drawer himself. This is followed by the diaper routine and ‘PJs’ –  usually the same top he had been wearing in the daytime and no pants. He then gives our dog a kiss goodnight. One day, our dog was crying for him as he hadn’t gotten his kiss. I made the mistake of bringing our dog up to him, somehow making the kiddo think that the dog would sleep in his room and causing kiddo to have a meltdown after that. No worries, I’ll never be doing that again. He generally goes up to his room and into his bed without a problem but we have plenty of days when we have to drag him up there kicking and screaming. Once in his room, kiddo gets in his bed and then I have to do ‘something’ with his nightlight. I have not yet figured out what it is he expects. We have made the horrendous mistake of giving him a nightlight with over 16 000 settings. Usually, I do ‘something’ and then we tell him goodnight and everything is fine right up until we walk out and then the screaming commences. As we go down the stairs, the screaming gets worse and worse. If we’re lucky, it lasts a few minutes and then he’s out. If not, he’ll start kicking at the door, rattling the gate like a wild animal, and screaming like you wouldn’t believe. Sometimes he falls asleep from exhaustion. Sometimes, he’s still awake by the tie we go to bed but he is talking to himself and or playing quietly so we let him be. Other times, he’s stuck in a meltdown mode and the only thing we can do is take him into our bed.

By the time he is finally asleep – if at all – we are deflated and exhausted. Too tired to do much, and most oftentimes feeling angry from kiddo’s antics, we often resort to simply each keeping to ourselves and taking time to cool off. We often watch a TV show/movie or sleep. There simply isn’t much time nor energy for us anymore and any ounce of energy left needs to be put into the reserve for tomorrow is another day and we never know if tomorrow will be better or worse…