Ever hear of a Claire-Storm? I can guarantee that if you lived in my vicinity, you would have heard it. Ohemgee. Claire has had a bit of a temper since she was a baby – I guess it’s one of the not-so-great side effects of having a very determined little girl. I’m sure it will come in handy when she’s older because hopefully it means she will go after what she wants in life, but in the meantime…
This morning, Claire was in a good mood. Although I had to wake her up (the usual for weekday mornings), she was pretty easy to get out of bed. She let me change her diaper and get her dressed with no fuss at all. We came out to the living room and watched “The Backyardigans”. She brushed her teeth and allowed me to finish up the job. I got all our stuff together.
But by the time we had to leave, she had started to play with her dollhouse. Now, that dollhouse was one of the best things I have bought for Claire because she plays with that nearly every single day. I don’t think she plays with anything else as much as she plays with that. I told her that it was time to go and she could play with the dollhouse tonight when we got home, but of course, she was having none of that. Although she loves daycare and always has fun there, she had no interest in going this morning.
I tried my usual (empty) threat of leaving without her, telling her she’d have to stay at home all by herself. I went down the stairs to the foyer, rustled my jacket, opened and then closed the front door, and locked it loudly. I stood very quietly in the foyer and listened. It isn’t usually very long before I hear a slightly concerned “Mommy?” before she scrambles to her feet and comes to see if I am still here. Then we get our shoes and coats on and out we go.
Not today. She called my bluff and I realized that that trick is now used up.
So I did the only thing left available to me. I picked her up, kicking and screaming, and because she was thrashing around too much for me to do very much, I carried her outside to the car with no coat, no shoes, no socks. I’m sure it was quite the sight for anyone who happened to look out their windows at us.
It was enough of a shock that she quieted down right away and after I sat her in her car seat, I was able to put her socks and shoes on, although I was not about to start fussing with her coat at that point. I got in the car, backed out onto the street and heard a forlorn “Coat? Coat!!” followed by slightly-less-hysterical crying.
She was fine by the time we got to daycare and I was able to put her coat on her before I got her out of the car. I was told by one of her teachers that she had a great day, and was a real goofball.
Most of this evening was good. We had supper, we went out and did some weeding. She put up a little bit of a fuss when it was time to come back into the house (Claire would live outside if she could) and kept trying to put off having a bath, but it wasn’t too bad. Then I took her out and started to get her ready to put her diaper on.
And the Claire-Storm hit again.
Screaming, crying, thrashing. The absolute impossibility of getting a diaper on her, and even when I did manage at one point when she quieted down (the Eye of the Claire Storm), she then started yanking it off again. She kept protesting that she wanted to “Go pee! Go pee!” Whereupon she would go sit on her potty and, predictably, not pee.
And you know what? That’s fine that she’s not actually peeing in her potty. I am aware that it is part of the process. She can sit on her potty regularly until she does pee, I’ll congratulate and make a great big happy fuss over what a good job she did, and then she’ll know that that’s what it feels like to “go pee”. I don’t want to discourage her at all – I’m all too aware of the myriad possible ways of screwing your kid up because you screwed up the potty training process (thanks a lot, college and university psych classes!).
But fuck me – does the desire to “go pee” and then sit on the potty for 20 minutes without peeing* have to take place ONLY in the morning when it’s time for us to go somewhere or right before bedtime? The bedtime thing is bad enough, but I can adjust that time a little bit, but there isn’t a whole lot I can do about when we leave in the morning because Momma has to be at work for 8 a.m.
*She doesn’t sit there for 20 minutes straight. She’ll sit there for a couple of minutes, then get up and run out or pretend like she is going to cooperate with me, and then she runs back in and sits down on the potty.
And yet, there is very little I can do. I might carry my kid outside with no coat, shoes or socks, but I’m not about to put her in her car seat with absolutely nothing on, not even a diaper. Tonight, I just rode out the Claire Storm. When she gets into a full-blown tantrum, it’s all I can do. Just leave the room she’s in, pretend to ignore her and try to keep myself calm (though it’s pretty damn obvious where she gets her temper!).
Eventually she calmed down and let me put her diaper on, though she refused to let me do so on her change table. That’s a new thing lately – although she does allow me to use the change table at times, she is starting to want me to put her diaper on on the floor (and strangely, on the floor near the top of the stairs). If that continues, I will probably put her change table away in the garage and thus create more space in her bedroom.
I don’t know. When she has these tantrums, I usually end up feeling frustrated, powerless and a little incompetent. I guess everyone did warn me about the “Terrible Two’s”!
