This is an interesting sense of fashion

But after the meltdown that ensued when I wouldn’t give her the packet of wipes on the counter, I decided it was time for a nap.  Cut to the chase and 2 hours later and nothing but screaming, there was no nap and not surprisingly, Courtney wasn’t happy with me.  But nap time is nap time and while she doesn’t think she needs it, she clearly does.  And then I feel guilty because really, I desperately needed the nap.  I needed the quiet time, which didn’t happen due to the screaming, and some sleep.  And I’ve talked to my local guru about this and she told me nap time is nap time and you don’t go in until it’s over.  So I didn’t.  But then I feel guilty when my toddler is a little angry with me and didn’t give me the smile I normally get when I go into her room.  Then, I wasn’t exactly smiling either.

It doesn’t really sound like it was a bad day, it’s not like I did anything and I didn’t snap at her or anything.  I don’t think.  But the day came off of a bad dinner out from the night before when I did something I KNEW we shouldn’t have done but I did anyway.  It’s not Courtney’s fault that I didn’t listen to my gut and then I had a bad time.  It’s not her fault that I’m 7 months pregnant and I’m so tired and it’s 100 degrees and I still don’t feel good, yet there she is, at the receiving end of my joy and misery.  I try so hard to keep my emotions in check and not let her know that, at times, she’s driving me nuts.  I can’t hold her the entire time I’m trying to make breakfast or lunch and the constant whining on certain days drives me to drink.  OK, not really but I’d like to.

Sometimes I’d like to take a few hours and hide in another room.  Or at the spa.  And I feel like this is the easy part, the 1 kid part.  There are going to be more bad days on my part, I just hope they’re farther apart.

I did download a few videos for our plane flight to Mexico, with the intention of keeping Courtney in her seat.  Well, it didn’t work out, I didn’t even turn it on for that flight but I’ve certainly used those videos since then.  And herein lies my problem.  And it’s not just the videos but the iPhone as well.  We’ve created a monster of electronic proportions.

The TV and the iPhone have had their benefits.  When I’m trying to get the house ready for people to come and look, I’ve put Courtney in front of Elmo so I can turn on lights and clean her toys (otherwise, for every toy I clean up, she takes out 2).  The iPhone has been great in the car, it keeps her occupied and awake on those rides when I’m just trying to get home before she falls asleep and ruins nap time for me her.  And no doubt, those days when she is whiny and crying over everything and nothing, I’ve used the videos or phone to my advantage.  But now, now, she wants the phone.  All. The. Time.  And it’s one thing to give her the phone but then she hits the damn “home” button and you spend the majority of the time getting her back to an app she wants to play.

But really, I don’t want her watching TV or playing video games all the time.  But I don’t know how to get her off the iPhone crack.  There are a zillion things I’d rather she be doing than playing Itsy Bitsy Spider for the 8000th time on my phone.  I want those items to be a treat, not to be expected.  I’ve gotten so that I have to hide my phone in the car to a place where she can’t see it otherwise she just screams bloody murder until I hand it over.  And I have to hide it in the house, otherwise I get the same thing.  And the same thing happens with the laptop.  It’s nonstop, “mine mine mine.”  Ugh, a monster.  I guess I need to bust out more books, some coloring books, oh, and maybe a sibling.  But she’s going to have to wait 16 more weeks for one of those and even then, said sibling isn’t going to be much fun for a while…

While I know that Courtney is only 17 months old and she has a LOT to learn, I’m pretty sure her behavior is going to leave us needing to find some new friends.  She was evil.  A bully.  A brute.  Not exactly a sharer or the kind of person that you want your child to be around.  Perhaps a bad influence. By the time the play date was over, I was embarrassed and I’m fairly certain my friends were over it.

The host has a Little Tikes car, the same one that C has and she plays in all the time.  Courtney sat in there almost the entire time.  And, heaven forbid someone else sat in there, or wanted to, Courtney would either sit on top of them OR she’d pull them out OR she’d try and slam the door on them OR all three.  Literally, she grabbed this little boy by the overall straps and yanked him out of the car.  Or she would have, had I not stopped her.  And this other little boy was playing with a toy fire truck, until C yanked it out of his hands and took it away.  I gave the truck back to him but man, was she pissed.  She’d steal things from other kids, push them down, pitch a fit when she wouldn’t get her way, all of it.  I spent a good 2 hours saying, “You need to share” and “Give that back” and “Courtney, so-and-so was playing with that.”

Clearly, she needs to spend more time with other kids.  And she needs to learn to share.  And hopefully her “school” in the fall will help with that, although that’s not for MONTHS.  I can just see her now, yanking the pacifier out of Segundo’s mouth, although hopefully he/she won’t be a paci baby.  Seriously though, it’s hard for me to meet people and make friends without my child working against me.  This parenting thing is hard enough without having to do it without a peer group.

ED: I mentioned to my friend how sorry I was that my kid was beating up her kid, she didn’t even know what I was talking about.  See, most of these “issues” are all in my head.

Turns out I need a license too.

There’s a chance, a good chance, that I tried to kill Courtney last week.  Not on purpose.  I SWEAR!  Please don’t call DFCS or CPS or whatever, it was an accident.

Thursday night Courtney wouldn’t eat dinner.  I didn’t get it.  I kept forcing food on her.  Eat.  EAT.  EAT!!!  And she’d have a bite of this and a bite of that.  But she wouldn’t really eat anything.  And then.  Oh dude.  Then.  She projectile vomited ALL OVER THE PLACE.  All over me, all over her, all over the kitchen.  ALL OVER.  I never would have guessed that someone so small could hold so much food in her stomach.  Nor would I have ever guessed that it would take a hot dog so long to digest.  (Although, a hot dog is probably like gum, it stays in your stomach for seven years.)

I gave Courtney bad milk.  Really, really bad milk.  As in, the milk had gone bad 4 days before she drank it.  (That also means she’d been drinking the bad milk for DAYS.  Oops.)  And while the milk didn’t smell at all, apparently it wasn’t so good.  I never check the dates on the milk.  Why would I?  The milk around here is gone so quickly, we never get close to the expiration date.

And after the vomit and the odor (oh, the odor) and the laundry and the cleanup and the hysteria, Courtney was hysterical on entirely other level.  She was laughing and laughing and as happy as could be.  I totally understand why, all that curdled milk that was in her belly was, you know, gone.

I felt sooo terrible.  I still do.  Especially because that was 4 days ago and she still has an upset stomach.  And then Sunday I woke up with a stomach thing.  Payback, I know.  And I deserve it.  My poor girl.