Wednesday, April 11, 2007

When the shit hits the floor

I knew I was in for a rough late afternoon when I picked Lucas up from school today. As I was gathering his things, I saw another kid take the LEGO toy out of Lucas' hand. Lucas pushed him, the boy started to cry. I went over and said, "Lucas, you need to use your words. You hurt your friend. Tell him you're sorry." I said this several times, then Lucas had a full-blown tantrum, crying and screaming and flailing of the limbs.

Then Lucas clocked ME in the chin with his toy. I abruptly got up and said, "Time to go Lucas," and started walking toward the door. He screamed and came after me, then sat down right outside the gate, screaming at me, but not budging. I picked him up and dragged him, kicking and screaming, about a half a block and finally wrestled him into the car seat.

For some reason, the drive home cheered him up. He seemed to forget that he had just done his best public imitation of Regan's evil side from the Exorcist.

I was willing to let bygones be bygones too. As we were nearing our house I asked him, "Do you want to go out for Mexican food or do you want hamburgers at home?" He answered, "Hamburgers at home and maybe some strawberries sound good to me." He even offered to carry in some of the bottled water I had in the car. I said, "Thanks for being such a good helper," to which he replied, "I'm not just a helper, I'm a helping machine!"

However, once we got inside, Lucas decided he had a couple more tricks up his sleeve. All of a sudden, he didn't want a hamburger. He said he wanted "something else" in an excruciatingly hard-to-listen-to whiny voice. When I told him we were having hamburgers and he could eat it or not, he had some other kind of fit, which I've since blocked out of my mind.

After a time-out in his room, Lucas came out and started eating his hamburger. Something else must have happened, because I gave Kevin the SOS signal for him to take over. I retreated upstairs for a bit, then came down once I heard things had settled down.

Kevin was in the bathroom with Lucas, as he was appointed the royal butt-wiper for the evening, and was helping his royal majesty get ready for bed. So I snuggled onto the couch with some blankets. I was starting to think we would have a peaceful ending to this day after all.

Then I heard Kevin yell, "Fuck! Shit!" My first thought was, "Watch your language." But I got up, and sure enough, water and shit were flowing out of the toilet, onto our bathroom floor and out into the hallway.

Kevin asked me, "Do you want to put Lucas to bed or clean up?"

After an afternoon like the one I had, I chose to mop up Lucas' shitty toilet water, and gag while doing it, than risk having to endure another one of his crazy tantrums.

Good NIGHT!

3 comments:

Kevin said...

"he was appointed the royal butt-wiper for the evening"

Ha

RookieMom Whitney said...

Laughing out loud which I really really needed today. I hate reading that what has recently started (insane, intolerable, irrational whining at age 2.5) will be continuing for more than 15 months, but I like to know that I'm not alone.

Thank you for sharing your saga, Sunny.

Lindsey said...

Wow! There was something in the water yesterday. We had a similar late afternoon that started in major tantrum and ended in Miles spraying himself in the face with citrus-based air freshener. It was like self-macing.