See how happy they are? That's 'cuz Dion was out of the house. I'm only half-joking, too.
The regular routine is that Dion starts Naomi's tooth-brushing and bath and Adam goes to brush his teeth and have bath 7 minutes later. Naomi gets dried and moisturised and is sent on her way to drop her laundry in the basket, get a pull-up, and read a story with me in the kids' room. If Adam has a "good bath," he gets 1o minutes of an activity of his choice before being sent on his way to bed.
And if Dion is doing bath, there is a good chance of one meltdown or blow-up in there somewhere. Sometimes Dion's, or even mine if I can't bear the arguing emanating from the bathroom. But if Dion is out, and I do bath, it usually goes swimmingly, so to speak.
On the other hand, once the kids are in their room, things usually go great if I'm out of the house and usually not-so-great if I'm home.
Things have been much less predicatable in the past two months, and unsurprisingly, especially since John was born. Not worse, actually better, just less predictable. In the first week, Adam was extra cooperative and agreeable and we had a week of respite from the great limit-testing war of 2011. Then for a week, he swung the other way. Naomi is hot and cold day-to-day. Many nights, I've had to go lie down with them or sit in their room until they settled enough to fall asleep. We're on Adam's fourth good-bedtime-bribery-chart. He's had 4 good nights out of 5 and now I think he's demonstrating to himself that bedtime isn't so bad after all. And whereas, it is very rare that Naomi struggles at naptime (as in just goes into her room on her own and lies down), today, she absolutely lost it. Lost it, I tell you. I had to rock her to sleep as she struggled for breath through sobs and a quivering chin until 30 seconds later she was fast asleep. I think it was just one bad nap.
If anything, I think things are gradually getting better since the worst, which was about 6 weeks ago. One thing that is helping is that in the past 2 or 3 months, Adam and Naomi are getting along with each other better. Adam seems to have developed enough of a conscience to stop using the tactic of attacking Naomi to force our hand in providing attention/intervention. And luckily, he rarely retalliates when she is aggressive with him. He folds. Tonight Dion despaired, "Maybe hockey really is out for Adam."
Perhaps they're even getting along too much better. They can now play together without much help from us and they're even collaborating together - or should I say conspiring? A few weeks ago, they shredded, shredded!, their bedroom together. Over the course of about 3 nights, they had created such a mess (that we didn't make time to tidy immediately) that I pulled Adam from daycare one afternoon to help me clean it up. We got in there and it was so bad that I didn't even know where to begin for a while. Adam's contribution was somewhat symbolic. I had him taking books and toys back to the living room, pretty much one by one, to keep him busy the whole time I was putting everything else back together. I wish I'd thought to get some snapshots. One upside to the room shredding was that Adam introduced Naomi to the potty he found in their closet (though she has yet to use it correctly) and he also found his new favourite book, a Curious George collection, given to us by Karl for Adam's baby shower.
To those of you unfamiliar with young children: Please do not construe any of this as cause for concern. It's all healthy, developmentally/age-appropriate behaviour that is, as a matter of course, improving. And while they are gaining skill at pushing our buttons, I can usually see the humour in all of it, if not immediately then soon after. Most people would never believe Adam and Naomi are capable of any of this. They are amazingly well-behaved in public. We get tons of compliments. They save this stuff especially for us (thanks!), when they feel safest (thanks, I guess). And, we've been at Poh-Poh and Gung-Gung's house so much lately that they're limit-testing there, too. One bedtime was such a disaster, that, as I had warned I would, I packed them into the car and drove them home, somehow, managing to do so without waking P and G!
Anyone wanna babysit? Muhahahahahahah.
See? It ain't all bad.
No comments:
Post a Comment