Don't I Feel Sheepish

Reading back over my last post, later when I was in a different frame of mind, I felt a little sheepish for being so incredibly annoyed. Yet the post was definitely evocative of that annoyance, no doubt- I remembered exactly how irritated I was at everything right at that time.

My irritation was my own fault in large part. It has to do with expectations. I had unrealistic expectations for the first day of our trip. Our second and third days were much better, ranking near the top of days I have spent with my family, but that first day, I should have known better than to hope and expect that things would go perfectly.

One thing I'm learning about parenting a toddler is that toddlers are predictable, oh, probably 80% of the time. You know how they will react to any relatively familiar situation about 8 out of 10 times. But it's those other 2 times out of 10 that will really kick you in the (metaphorical) nuts.

You think he'll just LOVE that homemade mac and cheese, when in fact he won't try it because it's white instead of orange. You're sure she'll fall asleep in the car because she hasn't napped in three days, but really she'll just stay awake and either scream at you or make you sing "The Hello Song" from Bounce over and over (and over and over). (You may alternate with "The Goodbye Song" for variety.) He asks for "drum" and "spoon" and you produce both items (drum = tupperware), but it turns out that none of the spoons in the house will actually satisfy his need for "poon, peese." You think she'll have a blast riding through the woods attached to your back, when instead she pitches a fit every time she says, "Walk, peese" and is ignored.

I'll leave it to you to guess which of those things really happened to me this weekend, pronoun usage notwithstanding.

And the reason these little behavior "quirks" are such a metaphorical blow to the metaphorical male private parts is because a toddler's main form of communication is screaming. Oh, the quirkiness! Bonus points if it happens in public, you know, with lots of people around! You look like the awesome-est parent ever when your kid has the tantrum in the middle of the arts festival! Over Mommy's silly insistence that she actually wear the hat, instead of just putting it on and taking it back off again, proudly proclaiming, "Hat!" each time.

So, my expectations needed to be, uh, managed for the weekend, and like any rookie parent, I failed to manage myself (I keep thinking I might outgrow the "rookie" status some day, but it turns out that mastering the art of keeping the kid clean and clothed and fed is just the minor leagues. I'm nowhere near the bigs yet). The first day of any trip anywhere is tough on little kids. They are super malleable and definitely adjust to just about anything, but they do have their recalibration periods, and expecting them to recalibrate and have fun is just asking too much of them. I should know this by now. Yet I don't, which leads to posts like the last one.

And then when I get down about one thing not going the way it should, I also think about everything else that is wrong in my life, and then I get sucked into a self-pity spiral. And then I write petulant blog posts and then I go outside and kick rocks until I feel better.