Toddlers Come With a Surprising Amount of Tears

I feel like this may turn into the blog of crying, because today I need to talk about how I never realized just how many tears were involved in raising a toddler. My son was a pretty happy baby. He learned how to sleep through the night quickly, he cried to let me know he was hungry, tired, or wet, but otherwise, he was pretty easy going with a smile for everybody.

Once he learned to walk, weeks before his first birthday, things slowly started to change. He's now 16 months old and I can say that he is a full-fledged toddler, mood swings and all. He is now scared of everyone except (in order of preference) Mom, his daycare provider, Dad, and possibly Grandma. He screams whenever he hears the word "no". He has very definite ideas about how things are done and is convinced that pointing and grunting is all he needs to do to communicate effectively. Food is to be played with and all of it is for him. Liquids are to be spilled and splashed as soon as they're discovered, especially milk. Liquids that are drank should come from a cup without a lid, even if he's incapable from drinking out of such cups without spilling half of said liquid down his entire front. This weekend he's started taking off his pajama pants and throwing them on the floor in protest when his father and I want to sleep in past 7AM (maybe hoping for this the weekend Daylight Saving Time ends was a little foolish on our part).

He has very definite ideas about how the world should work and when he comes across any challenge to those beliefs (like the fact that Mom won't hold him while she's loading the washing machine so that he can see every part of this magical process), the world, as he knows it, is coming to an end, and sobbing is the only way to deal with it. Well, sobbing and possibly running to the other room or flopping if someone happens to be holding him when his world falls apart.

This is why I love it when my mom comes to visit, or one of my friends offers to babysit. Living with a drama queen is draining, and sometimes Mommy needs a break.

On the other hand, when the world is working the way he thinks it should, life couldn't be better. Reading him his favorite story (currently it's Caps For Sale because I do funny voices and actions with it) almost guarantees his magical giggles. Same thing for when I let him jump off the coffee table into my arms (I know I'm a terrible mother encouraging my child to jump off the furniture, but he's always trying to launch himself from somewhere impossibly high, so at least this way I'm getting it out of his system safely), or when we go for a walk outside, or when he's taking a bath (quite possibly his favorite activity ever).

Bad days with a toddler are certainly bad, and somehow worse than I expected, but good days, thankfully, are also better than I expected, almost infinitely so.