from refreshed to frazzled in the blink of an eye

So I just sat around all day yesterday afternoon.
And went to be at 8pm.
And slept in until after 8am, maybe close to 8:30am.
And then sat around all morning.
And I actually felt a lot better this morning.

Better enough (nice command of Eng lang. there) to even do some housework before making a yummy vege and tuna bake for lunch. Better enough to even head out of the house after lunch for a walk, not just around the block with R, but down to the shop the other side of the main road to get some juice and stuff.

All was going well until about 10m from our front door, when K started complaining. I asked her if she wanted to go for a long walk to the shop, or just a short walk - she wanted to go the long walk. So we continued. And she continued. It was only mild whining, so we dealt with it, but by the time we got to the traffic lights, she packed a sad and said she wouldn't hold my hand to cross the road.
So I said "if you don't hold my hand, we don't cross the road"...anyway, she held hands to cross the road, but then all of a sudden she packed a big tanty (80% on the tanty scale), saying she wanted to go home. So I said fine, we go home. We waited for the lights to change back again to cross over the road again, and in this time, she decided that she DID want to go shopping after all, but I had had it, and already said we were going home, so wasn't gonna relent then (she was about 90%tanty at this time). So we got back across the road, and she realised that there was not gonna be any shop today, so she went into escalated tanty mode (105% on the tanty scale), refusing to walk. I attempted reasoning with her (HA! reasoning with a toddler in mid tantrum) then decided our best thing to do was just get home, so I started dragging her home (holiding her hand, and later the arm of her jacket when she slipped her hand out. We are on the side of the main road at this stage). Anyways, things just went from bad to worse, and she started throwing herself down on the side road, doing the "prawn" making it near impossible to get her to stand up let alone walk. I managed a rugby hold for about 2 seconds before having to put her donw again, then just had to drag her home as she was now at about 150% on the tantrum scale and I just had to get her home to a safe place as I couldn't control her on the street, and her curdling screams were starting to get the neighbours looking out windows and shaking their heads at the horrible foreign mummy making kid cry. I was also sweating profusely by this stage and totally frazzled out with the whole thing. I swear getting her from the lights back home, about a 6min walk usually was the longest 20+mins of my recent life!!!

We got home, and cuddled up in bed, there were apologies and then a nap for 2hours, so I a not sure what set it off, but we have at least woken up on the right side of the bed this afternoon, and are now enjoying some afternoon tea and cake. And, despite now having a bit of おなかが張ってる, I am feeling 80% refreshed again. Which is good, because after talking to my sister on skype last night, she promptly rang up mum and told her that they should come over earlier since I was totally washed up at the moment, haha. (I WAS very tired when talking to her, and it must have really shown!!!)

I hope we can get out of the house tomorrow without incident to get to playgroup - last week we had a 10min interlude on the train when she nutted out and I just sat there through it, sucking up the looks from all the old fogies on the pretty packed train. *sigh* the joys, right!?

small sigh of relief

This morning when I took R for a walk (at 10am - I just can't face the cold mornings, haha) I saw a mother with a kid about K's age. The kid was in the pram. No, actually, the kid was doing "the prawn" trying to get out of the pram. And he was screaming, a lot and very loud. And while I shot the mother what I hoped was a look of empathy, I was also letting out a little sigh of relief that K is not the only one who nuts out in public. I just never see the tanty-in-public. Even in Aus, for the whole month I don't think I saw any public tantrums. I know they happen, but it is nice to see one that is not coming from my tempremental offspring.

Yesterday we went down to the shops in the car. We were only there for about 20mins, and I think K was pretty good in the shop - carrying the basket the whole time. But she lost it when we tried to get her into the car. I let J deal with it this time - I figure he needs to be the one to take control rather than sit in the driver's seat waiting for it to end sometimes - and calm came about 13minutes later. I guess in the scheme of things, 13 mins is not long but it seems so much longer on tanty-time I am sure.

I do seriously dread taking K out sometimes at the moment though, because I just never know when it is gonna strike. But at least I know that I am not alone!