Monday, April 06, 2015

defiance

Happy Easter folks.

We've been mainlining chocolate like heroin addicts; disaster for the diet, liberatingly great for the mind.

Easter is meant to be the dawn of new things, so it is no coincidence that it marks the dawn of a new vibe in our house.

Defiance.

My son turns 1, and inherits a new personality. I suppose it was going to happen at some point, but here he is. Easter Bunny took away my baby and has replaced it with a thing that throws himself on the floor in dramatic rage when I present him with anything he doesn't agree with.

After a [not tiring at all] game of Cat and Mouse with a plate full of mashed cauliflower, he aced me 10-0 by flinging it angrily all over the wall and cupboard behind him, splattering it and ricocheted it all over myself and my fancy chair.

Defiance. Cannot and will not, don't care what you bribe or offer.

Tipped off a Beaufort Scale 9 rage as resigned defeat and grabbed a biscuit for him and more chocolate for me.

Despite the temper tantrums, the boy is using energy like a gladiator at the moment, because he is benchpressing his own bodyweight. About 89 times a day. We are exhausted just observing this intense up and downing in front of our eyes, if anything my eyeballs have run a half marathon this weekend just watching this go down.




Play with a toy for 5 seconds, concentration span ends, pulls himself to nearest edge. Pull up. Stand, shimmy around, sit. Throw dummy across room. Excitedly go and grab it. Ram it into mouth with satisfied grin. Concentration span ends. Pull up onto nearest edge. Up and down. Up and down. Throws dummy. Grabs TV remote, waves it around to try and switch telly on. Pull up, down up and down. Then five more sets.

It's more entertainment than he's ever been, but throw in a temper tantrum, an attitude, general defiance, night wakings and then a ton of teeth-related whingeing and you'll have us: two knackered beyond fuck parents.

Those painfully dull but happy moments of throw the dummy/fetch the dummy and wave the TV remote around like he's Ghandi are why we don't paw at our faces and take 10 Xanax.

Plus he does smile a lot too, which is half gratifying.

But if this is the gateway to the years of tantrums and Terrible Twos, we are in for a long ride. Welcome to Parenthood. Two years in, another 100 to go and you can never resign.

Oh look, he just did another pooh.
This cloth thing he is holding? This is his dou dou, the thing he used to sleep with that covered his face. He will go nowhere without it. Nowhere. That includes benchpressing .
 
The sun has finally started shining on this dismal good for nothing "Spring" we are having, and couldn't come a second too soon.

We've eaten our way through the weekend, which is half gratifying. So has he. Growth spurt machine, the guy is decking two slices of toast, an adult-sized bowl of oatmeal and a whole fruit before it's even 9am. At least, that's what he did yesterday.
 Roasts, wine and chocolate. How else does one survive?
Easter 6am breakfast shift! Rise and shine, we are going to play and we are going to play HARD.

I'm loving seeing his little personality come through and how he is rapidly turning into, like, a proper human. But the defiance? That can go.

4 comments:

Bug Eyed said...

Kids hey!

How about reverse psychology, tell him he can't have it and see what happens?

Otherwise there's always the you scream and perform louder than he does. I've seen it work. Kids of that age seem to respond to basal instincts. Ooh hold on, this bigger person is louder than me so I can't win.

Or not. Worth a try though ;)

Coffee and Books Cape Town said...

Only another year and he'll be easy. Just like you were xx

Coffee and Books Cape Town said...
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Flarkit said...

Doesn't it seem that the energetic defiance coincided most coincidentally with the introduction to chocolate? :)