Frazzled

Oh what a day. This really is how life is with a toddler – some days, Eli is super happy, charming, fun, etc. (like yesterday when he went to the dentist). Today was a completely different day. The morning was fine (Eli was at preschool), but by the afternoon, he was having a hard time.

One of the main problems was that I picked up a small Little Einstein’s ball at Target last night and just bought one, so the boys had to share. I’m just not going to buy two of everything (we have plenty of duplicate toys around here, but we have SO many balls rolling around inside and outside that it’s silly to buy two of these). Well of course both boys wanted to play with the ball and that put Eli in a lot of turmoil. It eventually got so bad that I put the ball out of sight and said Eli needed to improve his behavior to earn it back for tomorrow. I was not giving in to these crazy fits.

The rest of the day was so awful. Eli would not stop crying about anything and everything and at one point cried so hard that he threw up (something he does occasionally, it’s gross, but only when he gets SO worked up that he gags on his phlegm). Luckily I could tell it was coming, so I ran him in to the bathroom and he threw up there.

But by about 5:30 p.m., Eli was inconsolable. He was tired of me (and I was tired of him!!) and just wanted Ben to be home. There was a chance Ben was going to have to work late tonight, but luckily he took his normal train home and arrived a little after 6. But Eli kept screaming that he wanted to talk to Ben on the phone (and flipped out when Ben got cut off at one point because of where the train was), so I kept calling him back and they stayed on the phone during Ben’s entire train ride (Eli was crying the whole time of course – for no obvious reason, he was just sad) and didn’t stop crying until we got him ready for bed and were reading books, so he relaxed a little.

At one point before Ben got home, I was ready to pull my hair out from the constant crying. But I tried to see the humor in the situation – Eli was on the phone with Ben and Charlie had quietly snuck off to the bathroom and was happily pulling/tearing up the toilet paper and making a mess. I like how at the end of the following video clip that Charlie tried to come up to Eli and talk to Ben on the phone too. Eli wasn’t happy about sharing his talking time with Charlie. And Charlie was trying to give him a piece of toilet paper, but it was a gesture that wasn’t taken very well.

And I swear the crying seemed louder in person – especially earlier when he was sitting in my lap flipping out… by this point he had been crying for over an hour straight so he was a little worn down (please excuse the laundry in the video).

Eli's Fit and Charlie's Toilet Paper Unrolling (April 2010) from Sarah on Vimeo.

Here’s a video of Charlie saying his favorite word, happy, over and over right before we put him to bed. It was pretty cute. And you’ll see Eli back to a more normal state.

Charlie saying "Happy happy happy!" (April 2010) from Sarah on Vimeo.

Since this is a post with videos, I’m going to sneak in this clip of Charlie saying hi and giggling at his friend Tabitha’s beta fish yesterday -

Charlie and the Fish (April 2010) from Sarah on Vimeo.

Tomorrow has to be a better day (fingers crossed).