The Joys of Tantrums

The terrible two's are rearing their ugly head again at our house.  Kate is our first child who has gone through the terrible two's...usually my kids are terrible three's.  Hopefully, Kate won't be both!

Two days ago, Kate had a 15 minute tantrum because she wanted a popsicle at bedtime.  She just stood in front of the refrigerator screaming and crying.  It was so.much.fun!(insert eye roll here!)

Kate is strong willed!  Getting dressed in the morning can be interesting and I find that if I just give her a choice between two different colored shirts then she is fine.  If I don't give her a choice, sometimes it's not an issue but other times it just gets ugly.

Take this morning for instance.

It's almost Valentines Day and I have a cute shirt dress...pink and black with hearts... and heart tights that I bought her.  I wanted her to wear it to church.  I talked up the outfit before I took it out and she wanted to wear it.

The problem was that the dress is long sleeved but kind of light weight and, since it is still arctic around here, I wanted to put a turtleneck on underneath it.  Kate doesn't do well with layering.  (exhibit A...a tantrum when I made her wear a sweatshirt over her shirt and a coat on the coldest day of the year a few weeks ago!)

I tried to move really quickly with the turtleneck and dress but it didn't work.  Once the turtleneck was on she wanted nothing to do with the dress.:(  Tantrum ensued!  So, I decided to punt and let her just wear the turtleneck and gave her a choice of pants.  Trouble is...she wanted to just wear the turtleneck and the tights.

After more tantrum time and a few hugs and gentle whispers to try and calm her down, I searched through her drawer for a skirt.  Unfortunately, the only one I had had pumpkins on it!  Since she couldn't just go to church with the turtleneck and tights....the pumpkin skirt was the answer. (It didn't help that we were running very late this morning!)

It took a few more minutes for her to calm down! (Jon saw me taking this picture and asked in a surprised voice, "You aren't going to blog that, are you!?!"  To which I answered, "Absolutely!  This is parent revenge!":)

At Mass, Msgr. talked about St. Philip in his homily and about humility and being able to laugh at yourself in humbling moments.  Isn't it wonderful that Kate gave me an opportunity to live out his homily!  As he was talking, I was holding my beautiful two year old dressed in a pumpkin skirt with heart tights.  I didn't even attempt to put on the cute little heart ribbons in her hair that matched the tights because she was such a mess!  She is not a fan...to put it mildly...of having "pretty, pretties" in her hair!  Geez, isn't that why God gives moms girls...to dress them up and put bows in her hair?  Obviously Kate missed the memo.  (Come to think of it, Sarah hated things in her hair when she was little, too!)

Good thing I've(mostly) gotten over having my children look perfect!

Kate did fine the rest of the morning.  She is having quite a good nap this afternoon....still in her "interesting" outfit!

Tantrums must be in the air for us because Luke had a doozie of his own, (which is a complete rarity) about an hour after we got home from Mass because....get this...."He didn't get to go to the bathroom at church."!  

Seriously!?!  Is there something in the water?

The joys of parenthood....kids grow up so fast...(Well, the older kids' "phases" are just as fun(!))...someday I'll miss this(?)....

 Well, not right now!

 Oreos make things a little better.  I'm thinking that every time the kids have a tantrum I'm just going to drink wine from the bottle...with a straw...until they finish carrying on!;)

(Just kidding...I honestly don't even like wine:)

Hoping you have a tantrum free day!