My son and I had our first fight. Well, I’m not sure if you can call it a fight when one party can’t verbalize more articulately than “Thee thaa! Pbbbllttffft!” (Then again, maybe that’s about as articulate as some fights get…) Anyway. It was very distinctly different than any disagreement that has arisen between us before because he very clearly got angry at me and looked at me in a way I hadn’t seen him look before.
I should have known we were off to a bad start when he woke up at 6:30 (about half an hour before I would term it a godly hour) and I brought him into the bathroom with me. I placed him on the bath mat and he looked up at me with a cheeky grin, took one look at my grump face, and his smile just fell right off his. Oh I felt so bad about that! That should have been my hint to turn my attitude around. But it wasn’t.
The next order of business was to change his diaper, which was full of poop I could smell from where I stood. Now, Cy has hit this phase where he HATES having his diaper changed. Ever since he got real mobile (so, since about 6.5 months, thus about 1.5 months of this), every single time we try to change his diaper, he squirms, wriggles, rolls, and crawls his way to freedom, and if we try to pull him back or otherwise continue the diaper changing process, he squawks and cries. Most times, we can try to distract him with something fun. If that doesn’t work, or if I’m doing it by myself, I’ll just try to get the new diaper on with him wriggling about. But lately, he’s getting even more ornery about it and it’s getting harder not to get pissed at him. I’m so beyond sick of this phase.
On the morning in question, his diaper was full of poop, and as soon as I took it off, he scrambled out of there, with me desperately trying to chase after him with the wipes before he got poop all over the guest bed, walls, and clothes. I was trying to wipe him down. He was trying to play with a brush he wanted to drop off behind the bed, but it got stuck. I was trying to clean his balls. He was trying to get the brush. He started crying. I was not sympathetic.
And then he started shrieking like he was in pain. That’s when he gave me The Look. I immediately stopped touching his bits. I took him to Toby afraid he was actually hurt. Toby, barely roused from sleep, replied, “He’s just annoyed.”
“Well, but he cried when I touched his balls.”
“So stop touching his balls.”
It was ridiculous and not pretty, and soured the whole morning. And then I had coffee.
And that’s when I realized there are two times a day in which one should never pick a fight.
One is right before bed because you dwell on all these emotions of EPIC PROPORTION…only to wake up in the morning and realize you were being ridiculous.
The other is before 7 a.m. because coffee. Once you’ve had coffee, you realize those emotions of EPIC PROPORTION were silly after all.
But I’m still hoping you’ll tell me this phase passes soon.
Thing I Love About Cy Today: How excited he gets when we read his bedtime story together. As soon as he sees me pull out the book, he flaps his arms, curls up, and coos, ready to listen.