A Swim, A Hike, Screaming, OCD & Laundry Mishap

18 Months & 3 Weeks Part II

For some reason when I was behind 3 weeks while on vacation, I think I counted his age incorrectly.  I am writing the blog on his 19 month birthday – so last week he was definitely 18 Months & 3 Weeks, but I wrote that last week… so I was messed up.  Sorry for the confusion! 

2 Fridays ago was a busy day!  I had my 12 week OB appointment, so Ty and I (with Shannon and Finley) headed down to Manchester.  We went to Lots for Tots thrift store first, ran into the mall for a quick stop, and went to Taco Bell for lunch.  Ty is now able to eat the entire “Cheese Roll-up” (just like a cheese quesadilla) by himself.  Very impressive.  Then we headed over to my OB appointment.  Shannon was nice enough to stay in the waiting room with Tyson and Finley while I went in to see my doctor.  My blood pressure was 88/58, which is pretty low, but they said it was great.  I have gained 4.5 pounds, which I think is quite a bit in a month, but she was very happy with that too.  I was happy to hear that, though, since I have been so sick.  It took her forever but she was finally able to get the baby’s heartbeat (in the 150’s) and there is just nothing like that in the whole world!  I was able to get Heath on the phone, so he could hear it too!  My doctor said, “This one is a wicked squirmer.  It was moving all over the place, that’s why it took so long to find the heartbeat.  It wouldn’t sit still!”  She came out to see Ty, since she hadn’t seen him since he was just born and it was so cute!  He had been giving Shannon a run for her money out in the waiting room, but was good as gold when the doctor was there, thank goodness.  He even slapped her five!  Well, after all of that we headed to the grocery store on the way home.  I finally convinced Shannon (germaphobe) to let Finley ride like a big girl in the grocery cart, after Shannon cleaned it off with the wipes for about 5 minutes.  It was so cute!  Finley thought that she was queen bee.  Kicking her legs and smiling non-stop.  Adorable.  So we went our separate ways (for about an hour) once we got back to my house.  We had to wait for our husbands to get home and then we were going to my parent’s house for swimming and supper.  We swam first and even I went in!  Tyson did much better in the pool; he actually appeared to enjoy it this time!  Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures to show of this adventure, since I had left my camera at home.  Now my small pocket camera is having trouble with the memory card, it says it is “locked” and won’t do anything.  I guess I have to buy a new card.  Anyways, after swimming we went back to the Fairway and had supper.  It was scrumptious.  It was a Mother’s Day get together with Mom since I had to work on Sunday and Shannon was going to be in Maine.  We gave her her gifts and flowers.  She appeared to have a nice time.  Devin and Leigh couldn’t come because Leigh was working, unfortunately.  We missed them!  Well, we got home at about 10:30 PM, just a tad bit past Ty’s bedtime, but he did fall asleep in the car, at least.

Picture courtesy of Dad's iPhone

A little blurry and our heads are cut off... but it's a picture of my boy and I!! (=

On Sabbath I had to work and Ty and Heath stayed home.  Heath had plans to go to Conway to church in the AM, but Ty was tired out from the day/night before and didn’t wake up until after 9 AM and Heath didn’t have the heart to wake him up.  Heath, Ty, and the puppies went hiking with Shannon, Sean, Finley, and my mom (Dad was on-call).  Ty had a great time in the backpack and they said it was a nice hike with great views of Squam Lake.  After their hike, they stopped at the lake since, of course, Sean had to go swimming.  He loves to swim in sub-zero water.  He’s crazy.  It was a very hot day – in the 80’s, but it had been freezing lately, so the water was super cold.  Heath flirted with the idea of going swimming, but he said he changed his mind right away when his foot went completely numb as soon as it hit the water!  But that didn’t stop Tyson!  Ty had been on the water’s edge, when I guess he couldn’t take it anymore, and just starting walking into the lake!  Got all of his sneakers wet and got up to his knees before Heath grabbed him!  What a rascal.  I guess he got brave after his big swimming experience the night before! 

On Sunday, I worked again and Heath and Ty headed over to the Edwards for Mother’s Day.  He took his mother out to breakfast and then had her babysit Ty, while the boys went ATVing all afternoon.  Nice guy, huh?  Of course it’s probably about the only thing Sonia would want for Mother’s Day… is to spend time with Tyson!  On the way home from work, I stopped at the pharmacies (told the boys not to rush home) and only got a few deals.  Nothing too earth-shattering.   Pantene shampoo & conditioner for $1 and 8 boxes of Hot Tamales at Rite Aid for free.  When I got home, I had a beautiful bouquet of flowers waiting for me with a card from Tyson that read, “I love you Mommy.”  I couldn’t help but crying, since I can’t wait for the day that he actually says those words to me.

On Monday, we spent the day picking up after the weekend most of the day.  One thing I have to mention that I don’t think I’ve talked about is Tyson’s screaming.  He has been doing this for a couple of weeks, I just have forgotten to talk about it.  It has gotten pretty bad, though.  Tyson has a short fuse.  I wonder where he gets that from – between Heath and I – he did not have a chance.  But his impatience is just terrible.  One of his favorite things to do is to push his ATV all over the house and run it into things at full blast.  He will hit the couch and say, “Boom!”  He hits the kitchen cabinets and goes, “Boom!”  He just loves to do this.  Of course he tries to hit the dogs with it, too – but we are working on that one.  Anyways, what always happens is that he can’t seem to make the corner just right – he won’t have it angled right and he will get stuck.  He will try to go around the table, but get hung-up on a chair.  So at this point, he starts screaming.  And I mean he is screaming at the top of his lungs like he is being murdered.  The first few times he started doing this, I dropped everything and came running, thinking that I would find him bleeding from falling or something.  No, the child is completely fine, but is just frustrated.  The same thing happens when he is playing with the tupperware.  He has graduated from just emptying out the tupperware cabinet, to trying to fit the tops onto the bottoms.  Well, of course he will get some that just will not fit exactly right… and here comes the screaming.  I’m really not sure what to do with this.  I have told him that he is the boy who cried wolf.  I have told him that when he is really hurt, I am not going to come running because he screams like this all the time.  I do go and check on the situation, but when it is just a frustration scream, I tell him to “Work it out, Ty.  Figure it out.”  I have showed him how to back up his ATV and steer it differently… that has helped a little bit, but does not take care of the problem completely.  I mean, what do you do?  Do you punish a child for screaming out of frustration?  It is inappropriate behavior, but I do feel bad because, right now, it is his only means of communicating.  He can’t say, “Help, Mama.  I’m stuck.”  Every time he does this, I actually say those words just in case it sticks and he starts talking… but I’m not really sure what to do with this behavior.  Any ideas out there?  One of the reasons why I think he screams like this is that he is a perfectionist and has OCD, like me.  This became clear on Monday, when I was loading his hamper.  I was going through the clothes we had gotten at the thrift store on Friday… and I was throwing clothes into the hamper.  Ty was across the room, in the doorway, playing with some toys.  I had thrown a pair of pants into the hamper and I had not hit it very well.  Each one of the pant legs were sticking out of the hamper – I was going to fix it but was finishing the bag I was sorting first.  Well, Ty saw this in the doorway, dropped his toys, and came right over to the hamper and put the pants in correctly – so that nothing was sticking out of it!!!!  Really?  His OCD must be pretty bad, too!  Poor guy!  Well, when Heath got home on Monday night,  Ty and Heath took me out for Mother’s Day (a day late) to the OG.  We hit up a few stores too, so it was a fun night.  Thank you boys!

Having one of his screaming frustrated moments

On Tuesday, I just felt like chilling out, but Shannon guilt-tripped me into going to Salem, NH with Mom for a shopping trip.  We were all looking for dresses for Ricky’s wedding that is coming up in about a month.  What a wasted trip, I should have stuck with my gut.  All of us struck out.  It was just terrible.  Ty wouldn’t nap on the way down and only took a small one on the way back.  Oh, one thing that was sad was that Mom had decided to take Tyson on a Merry-Go-Round in the mall.  Unfortunately, Ty cried through the whole ride – he was scared to death.  Really?  I tried to get a picture of this, but that was when I found out that my memory card was locked, so that was a bummer.  Again, not a ton of pictures this week.  When we got home from Salem, I ran around like crazy doing laundry.  I was so careful when I went through Tyson’s hamper, because he loves to throw random things into his hamper and I didn’t want to wash anything.  I removed 2 books, a mini-tractor, and one of his faux-crocs.  Unfortunately, the other croc must have been stuck in a piece of clothing because I ended up washing it and drying it!  I didn’t realize there was a problem, until I brought it back upstairs to find its “mate.”  The dryer had shrunk it at least 2 sizes!!!  I had just bought them for our cruise and now I have to buy another pair!  What is frustrating is that I went through the whole hamper to avoid this very scenario! 

I guess rubber/plastic and dryers don't exactly mix

On Wednesday, Ty slept until nearly 9 AM in his crib, which meant that I didn’t get to say good-bye to him before work, so that stunk.  I didn’t get to see him the whole day, since he is in bed when I get home.  I think he was tired out from our busy day the day before.  What can you do?  I got exciting news when I was at work.  For nurse’s week, there was a raffle and I won a Kindle Fire!!!!  I never win anything at all, and this is amazing.  It costs $200!!!  The very sad thing is that I had just bought my Kindle the week before and, this is terrible to say, but I don’t actually need it.  The Kindle Fire is just like a tablet (like my Ipad) but smaller.  The Kindle Fire is not the device you want to read books on (because it is color and has a glare).  I am probably going to sell it because I just don’t see us using it.  It’s such a shame – I am embarrassed.  It just shows that we are blessed – we literally have everything we need.

On Thursday, Ty did a few cute things.  For one thing, he was daydreaming non-stop while he was eating his meals.  I seriously had to keep waving my hand in front of his face to get him to come back to reality!  I mean, he does this sometimes, but on Thursday it was out of control!  When it was just about time for his nap, we were in his bedroom, putting his clothes away… when I asked him, “Are you ready for your nap?  Are you ready to go to sleep?”  He went right over to his crib and tried to climb up onto the base of the crib!  It was so cute!  He has never done that before.  He actually wanted to go to sleep!  I couldn’t believe it.  Another thing that happened was so funny.  After he had taken his nap, I was getting him changed into his clothes on our bed.  He looked up at our light and pointed.  Now, he has said, “light” a bunch of times, but he just appears to have no interest whatsoever in talking right now.  He won’t even try to imitate us now!  It is so frustrating.  Well, I pointed to the light and said, “That’s a light.  Can you say “light?”  I got close to him and exaggerated my tongue/mouth movements to show him how to say it.  He got this wicked determined look on his face – like he was concentrating so hard!  My heart just skipped a beat and I got so excited.  I thought, “He’s actually going to try to say light again!  Yes!!!!”  But my hopes were dashed when his determined look only meant gas, and he farted.  I couldn’t believe it!  I couldn’t help it, I busted out laughing so hard, since I was anticipating the word so much… and all I got was a toot.  Tyson laughed and laughed himself.  He always laughs when he toots.  He just thinks it’s the funniest thing in the world.  Well, I talked to my pregnancy-buddy in the afternoon, Miss Kelly Conrad.  The poor thing is still throwing up 6-7 times a day, despite taking Zofran every day.  I tried to give her hope and said that I had been feeling great for the past 2 weeks, so hopefully she will be over the worst soon!  Well, I think I jinxed myself.  We were going to the Mexican restaurant with Adam that night and as soon as we pulled our car into the restaurant – the nausea hit.  Could it be a worse time?  I had been feeling so great, but I must have been bragging too much and I got brought down to earth.  Not fun.  The only blessing is that Tyson was very good again in the restaurant and didn’t act up.  But about 2 weeks ago when we had gone there, he had eaten almost all of Heath’s cheese enchilada… so I got him a side order of a cheese enchilada this time… and wouldn’t you know, he would not touch it!!!!  So frustrating.  He wouldn’t eat anything.  He had eaten a ton for lunch, so I didn’t stress out about it, but why does he do this?  He will devour something at one time, but a week or two later, try to give it to him again and he will straight out refuse it.  There is no rhyme or reason, I swear.

He is obsessed with my (regular) Kindle

He got it open!  Success!

Caught in the act!  Doesn't he look a bit subdued?

One of his new favorite things...walking around in my slippers

Well, that’s more than enough for this time.  Have a great week!