Well…it appears young Cameron has reached the ‘terrible twos.’ Dun-dun-DUN. Over the past week or so he has, quite frankly, become a little bit of a pain in the ass. There are two, NO, three issues that he has been getting all toddlerish about lately.
1. Bedtime: Just when we thought we had left sleep issues in the dust they decided to creep up again. It’s nothing as bad as what we were dealing with here, or here, or here but things were going SO well that it’s just a slap in the face to start having issues again. We’ve had a nice little bedtime routine of books and then songs and then bed for awhile now. Recently though, Cam started to understand ‘one more book.’ He is no longer content with 3 or 4 books and always needs ‘one more.’ I give him plenty of warning that we’re on the last book but he still insists on another by wailing and trying to nose dive out of my arms while I turn on his music. Then I give him a choice of songs or crib and he chooses “NO!” which I don’t recall being one of the options. I would finally choose crib for him which would bring on a whole new wave of tears and screaming. I leave the room then come back a few minutes later for a hug or another song. Repeat this process for about 20 minutes until he finally crashes. Admitedly, things have improved over the past couple of days since I started rocking him for about 5 – 10 minutes before putting him in his crib. Hoping to get him out of that habit quickly.
2. Food: Not really a new issue but he seems to have become even more picky lately. The only foods he will eat for us without protest are fruit (almost any type), waffles, pancakes, yogurt, crackers, chips and cereal. Let’s just say he’s a big fan of restaurants that serve breakfast all day long. He won’t eat any meat or veggies and will only eat shredded cheese (which is LOADS of fun to clean up). We’ve tried the whole ‘take a bite of X and you can have more Y’ but he just refuses and doesn’t eat. Last night he was in rare form at dinner and gobbled down his serving of mixed fruit and was begging for more even though he hadn’t touched his grilled cheese or corn. We tried to bargain with a bite of grilled cheese for more fruit and he choose “NO!” and slid his plate and cup across the table. We did this a few times before he finally just started to wail. Jason, Lily and I continued with our dinner and about five minutes later Cam asked for his plate back. I slid it back to him and he picked up the grilled cheese and took the teeniest little bite. We all cheered for him and I dished up some more fruit. It was very exciting! We continued this process until he had eaten his entire serving of grilled cheese AND some corn! WOOT!
3. Cleaning Up: Ugh…this is where he is really struggling and stubborn. He loves to play with his toys but hates to clean them up. In the last week he’s lost his trains at least three times and has spent countless minutes in time out. It’s like he just turns his hearing off when we ask him to clean up. We start off by making the super fun suggestion that it’s time to clean up. Deaf ears. Next, we get a little more serious. “NO!” Also, accompanied by him running away from the mess and often creating another mess. Finally, we get down to business with time outs. Eventually things get cleaned up but it’s a long tiring process for all of us. Sometimes we can trick him into cleaning up by making it a game…Put the trains in bed, Put the sharks in the basket, etc. Sometimes he plays along, sometimes he doesn’t.
I don’t remember Lily being this stubborn so often about so many things. She has always seemed to be pretty eager to please us which meant that she would usually do what we asked her to do without too much protesting. She had the occasional time out but it was a huge deal to her. She hated them. Cameron has no remorse. He’ll walk right over to time out and plop down to do his sentence and then start the whole thing all over again. The most frustrating thing is when he is very obviously trying to ignore us. Like the couch cushion suddenly got so interesting that he has to just play with it and lounge all over it and, what was that, Mom? Did you want something? Oh, clean up? NO!
It’s a phase. It will pass. Kids are so clever too. Even after a rough evening where the hands on the clock couldn’t possibly move to bed time fast enough I can’t stay upset with the little guy. As soon as I walked in his room this morning and saw his fuzzy head peering over the top of his crib and heard, “Hi Mommy! Get up!” I almost felt bad for getting frustrated with his antics last night. ALMOST!
