She's Growing.

This morning my wife Adrianne began her new job. She’s been working for years to obtain her new position. I am proud of her, her family is proud of her, and she is proud of herself. This morning was also my first day alone with the kids in over a month. I would like to boast that over the weekend I was not anxious about the change, but that would be a lie. The kids have grown so much in such a short period of time and the routines I had established with them have quickly whittled away during our packing, moving, and unpacking from our move to Pennsylvania.

Reviewing pictures and videos of the kids taken just a couple of weeks ago, and I can’t believe my eyes– my babies are growing up! Taylor, for instance, is now talking. She’s been saying words like cat, dog, pig, mamma, dad, etc. for a while, however, she is finally repeating words she might have only heard once or twice before; she is also putting several words together and forming rough sentences. These sentences, some distinguishable and others not so understandable are breathtaking to hear. My daughter is talking!

This morning she also had her first full-blown temper tantrum, another developmental milestone. Wow! What a time from hell. I’ve heard of the “terrible twos” but never did I expect the tantrums to be that bad. Looking back on the incident after a couple of hours of calm I still don’t know exactly what went wrong. She is definitely teething. She is picking at her molars like they are laced with gold and cradling her lower right jaw like it is a basket full of eggs. And before her naptime this afternoon, a little more than two hours after the meltdown, I could have sworn she asked for a cold teething toy (it sounded like she said chew toy, but I could not tell for sure and she would not repeat the words).

Before the tantrum, the morning started out just fine, actually it was perfect: both kids slept in, both allowed me to get the other one ready for the day without blowing a gasket, both pooped, both wanted to play and sing with daddy, and both were excited to go outside for a walk. Taylor, however, refused to eat her breakfast. While this is nothing new, she usually eats only a few bites of peanut butter toast, grapes, or drinks her orange juice in the morning, but today … nothing at all.

After our walk, Simon was ravenous. While trying to feed him, Taylor was all over me: climbing on my legs, pulling at my arms, crying, whining, begging for, what I thought to be, food. Hindsight, which has the advantage of being twenty-twenty, has me thinking that she didn’t need food as much as she needed comfort and some pain relief. Her teeth must have been killing her, but all I wanted to do was cram a few bites of yogurt down her throat. Yet, the more I tried to feed her the more, unknowingly, the more I upset her because I was unwittingly ignoring her needs. Well, to say she was not so happy with daddy this morning is an understatement. Would you believe my daughter bit my leg? Yes. The little chipmunk bit me! My first reaction, despite how purposely calm I had been during her screaming– counting slowly from one to ten does work– was to pick her up and throw her from the kitchen table into the living room. I was mad. But thank God man’s reasoning isn’t hampered until one’s emotions take over. With some one-on-one time, a short time-out in her bed, and a second or two to reflect on what other causes might have been the basis for her outburst, and a good 75-minute nap, Taylor spent the remainder of the afternoon in good spirits. So did I. Lesson learned: she’s growing.