Tantrums never stop...

They don't stop. Tantrums start around age two, and then they just develop, grow in size and in their formidable nature. I should know, I'm a living, breathing TANTRUM. (Please refer to mama is a potty-mouth for details)
They're the venting, uncontrollable f^%k f^%k f^%k f^%k swearing, Coprolalia (ooh - nice word!) but for people without Tourette's. Isn't  The Scream by Edvard Munch just a tantrum? Why not? It should be!
f^%k f^%k c*^t

I should probably proffer an explanation: the unhealthy obsession I have with tantrums is because my nearly-three-years-old son seems to be having an awful lot of them right now. And part of me just says 'oh well, it's age-appropriate' another part wants to give in, the other part wants to be incredibly stubborn and just say 'no' to well, everything, and the other part of me goes, 'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Mama having tantrum! and I can do tantrum bigger and louder'
(by this stage you may well ask: how many parts can one person list? oh there are so many....)

self portrait

ho hum. what to do?

I think that quite possibly the best, easiest way out of this situation is to do as follows:

1. Eat a disgustingly large, obscene amount of chocolate-laden goodies
2. Stay calm when toddler having tantrum and then reiterate the fact that the tantrum will not have desired effect
3. Ensure that when parent (i.e. self) wants/needs/is about to have a tantrum, that I swear silently,  indiscriminately and internally ( f^%k c*^t sh*t, so on and so forth...)
4. repeat step 1, often.

I could take up boxing to release all pent-up tantrum-energy, but who has the time? Anyway, I like my teeth as they are. (in mouth, still attached)

Although after step 1 repetition, they may well end up falling out anyway.

TANTRUM TIME!

Just airbrush me… please

How is it that newborns have the uncanny ability to suck the life out of their parents in the space of a few short weeks? I’m not complaining, not really, I just… well … ever since having children I seem to have aged a helluva lot.

The general consensus is: don’t do drugs and that hard drinking and partying completely f**k you up and when you’re over 40 your face will reflect the life you have lived. To be sure, I have lived a rather, er… shall we say full life. But I have not aged so much back then as I have in the past 3 years. 

The reason? No, my hard-drinking-partying-days are NOT catching up with me. Those past years feel, in fact, a good deal more sedate in terms of staying up late and wrecking the body than the rearing children ones. That lacrosse accident that I had in high school or that time when I partied all night with my friends, showered and then went to work for 8am in the morning have not caught up with me. You might think this is completely absurd but no! I tell you, these things are not ongoing sustained abuses of the body without the chance for respite and recuperation but that child-rearing is.

What I am trying to say is…

I used to be able to sleep in until 2pm if I wanted to and now I wake up at 6am (sometimes 5.30am) after I have been up and down during the night, as has my partner (er. ok, so NOT as much as my partner) and we do it cos we LOVE our kids but they are sapping all the collagen and vitamin young from our faces and, as a result I look like this:

What I am trying to say, is...

that I am getting OLD and WRINKLY and I have been seriously thinking about facial resurfacing for my skin and laser treatment for my rapidly diminishing eyesight  but I'm afraid that it will all go expensively and horribly horribly wrong and that I'll end up looking like this:

or perhaps even this:

(let’s just not even speak about my hearing cos we ALL know that Caroline is a COMPLETE DEAFHEAD).

wot? oh yeah.

I am popping vitamins like they are lollies and eating lollies like they are, well, lollies, and all in all my diet has gone to God as has my figure and so I am wearing those suck-in-underpant thingies that only OLD WOMEN wear

NO! not the sexy ones but more like, you know...

yes, more like that, but squishier and in black because I can't seem to consider wearing anything flesh-toned, although I am sure that will change (but only if I find some good ones at a reasonable price).

Successful Toilet Train(ing); with trains.LOTS of trains. And perhaps a few construction vehicles…

We have bitten the bullet. We say (with much conviction) After Christmas there will be no nappies. That’s it! No more!

Yep, Christmas came and we changed nappies all day, chanted the no-nappy-mantra in our minds, then as the haze of our sugar-loaded bravado waned, and we fell into sleep (read sleep as diabetic coma) we braced ourselves for the onslaught of poo-pants and wee-wee puddles; oodles of washing and perhaps a little poo-painting along the way.
Oh god, no more nappies.
What are we going to do? 

But Boxing Day came and we opened the packet of Bob-the-Builder underpants and said 'oo look! would you like to wear Bob, Scoop or Dizzy?' to which he promptly replied 'Scoop!' and we all cheered that he had not chosen Muck and then had the little chat about how we were going to keep Scoop clean and dry all day and that there would be a reward for doing so.

It has been one week now and our boy is now sans-nappies (except for sleep) and it has been surprisingly easy.

The secret to our success?

TELEVISION.

We are simply replacing one addiction for another.

We have tried chocolate and cake as suitable diversions/incentives, but telly has won out I’m afraid.
Yes, in the same way that heroin addicts are given methadone as incentive to not jab a drug-filled needle into their arm, we are encouraging an episode of Chuggington for success with potty. (The going rate at present is one poo=one Chuggington. Wee-wees have lesser value at two wees for an episode). He understands the currency so well that when Chuggington finishes, he promptly tells us that he is going to try for another episode. We have had to instil the ‘wee-wee must cover the entire base of the potty to be considered’.

Poo-poos? He understands the excitement and reward of the chocolate snail (as he calls it) in the potty, and has been successful thus far, but I think both he (and we) find the poo a rather stressful occasion.
First, we need to locate the exact right area for placement of potty and then we are all required to be calm, remove scoop-undies, sit and wait for the poo to come. Easier said than done. As adults we know that the poo can, and sometimes does, take a while to arrive. We also understand the difference between a fart and a solid mass emanating from our botty, and let's be completely honest here, the poo may also involve a fair bit of pushing. We know this, we are prepared for it. Hell, some of us even consider it a great way to catch up on current affairs and use the time to read the local paper. BUT, the toddler cannot read just yet and doesn't really grasp the fact that the grunting and face straining that he has done up to now has resulted in the poo. Poos just happen, they smell, are relatively warm and squishy and they get cleaned up by parents.

We live in hope.