Jayden, or a possessed child who I've never met before?

For those of you did not know, which is nobody, I think, returning to work after vacation is really hard.  Vacation is important and wonderful, but the first few days back in the office after returning from vacation is just challenging.  In fact it's so challenging that I've decided I need to start planning my next vacation, which I already have done.  Thank goodness.  It doesn't help that between now and then is probably the biggest day of my professional life so far - oral argument in an appellate case we are working on.  But if I can make it through that, the next day is vacation.

Jayden has had similar adjustment problems, I think.  And similarly, many of the issues are related to exhaustion, I'm pretty sure.  He's enjoyed being back and Juju's, but he is terribly confused.  Every day he asks if he's going to Juju's and who is dropping him off and who is picking him up, etc.  I'm thinking after this weekend we'll be back on track, but we'll see.

Tuesday and Wednesday were fine, but Thursday was a whole other story.  I picked him up from Juju's as normal.  And as normal, he put up a bit of a fight about leaving, saying he wanted to stay at Juju's and watch TV (one of the reasons I try so hard to avoid television at home).  But it just got so much worse from there.  I couldn't put him down because if I did, he tried to run back in to Juju's house.  But he also claimed he wanted to climb into the car.  Well that just wasn't going to happen.  So I had to restrain him while I strapped him in, getting slapped and kicked and at one point getting my glasses knocked off.  He continued to scream and cry hysterically the entire way home.  He took off his shoes and socks and threw them.  He figured out how to fit his feet through my head rest and was kicking at me through the headrest.  He kept trying to grab the door handle to open the door (thank goodness for child locks).  I actually pulled over on the freeway and put on my hazards for a minute because I didn't feel comfortable continuing to drive with him being so crazy.  I seriously thought my child was possessed.

Finally I realized I just needed to get him home.  I couldn't do anything about a time out while we were driving - there was no point in taking him out of the car seat just to have to fight him to get him back in it.  So instead I told him he was too tired and when we got home we were going straight to bed.  He, of course, screamed at me that he was NOT tired.  And went into a tirade about not wanting to see Jazzy, not wanting to see Daddy, not wanting to see Mommy, not wanting to go home, and wanting to stay at Juju's and watch TV.  When we got home he still couldn't calm down.  I closed the garage door and got my stuff in the house but he was still hysterical, re-opening the garage door and trying to strap himself back into his car seat so I could drive him back to Juju's.  I finally pulled him out and carried him upstairs.  That of course was also upsetting, but at this point there was nothing I was going to be able to do to calm him down and he was clearly beyond the point of tired.  I fought him while I took off his clothes and changed his diaper, and didn't even bother trying to brush his teeth.  At this point he was screaming at me that he wanted to go downstairs and "pway" or eat dinner or anything else.  I tried holding him and rocking or standing, and reading him a book, which has worked in the past.  But this time literally nothing would work.  He kept hitting and kicking and struggling and screaming.  I finally got him calm by reading him the Little Blue Truck book.  I read it twice and he actually stopped his hysterics.  But then I turned off the light.  And that brought on a whole new set of screams: "I don' wan' staws on!"  "I wan' go down-tairs!" "I not ti-yewd, I no wan' go bed!"  Finally I left him upstairs.  He threw baba downstairs once (by this time Carmen was home so he retrieved him) and continued to scream various things, but mostly "I wan' maaaamaaaa" for a while.  After what seemed like an eternity, he finally passed out in his diaper in the hallway outside of his room.

All in all, it was about two hours of hysterics.  I didn't dare try putting his pajamas on him so I carried him to his bed, covered him with his sheet and checked on him a couple times during the night to make sure he was covered with blankets. I also picked up the clothes he'd worn that day that he'd strewn all over the room and turned off the overhead light he'd turned on in an effort to prove he should not be going to bed.

Amazingly he slept through the night, about 11 hours, and woke up completely cheerful on Friday morning.  On our walk I asked him about the experience and why he was so mad.  He said he remembered, and it was because he wanted to stay at Juju's and watch TV and because he didn't want to go to bed (mostly sort of right), and that he wasn't crying anymore (thankfully).  I asked him if he thought he'd be happy in the afternoon when I picked him up and he said "yeah!"  And he was, thank goodness.  Luckily his friend's dad came at the same time as I did, so the TV was being turned off then anyway, but even without that he was getting ready to leave with me while the TV was on.

Carmen flew to Vegas last night, so I was very grateful for a cheerful little boy last night.  He did wake up in the middle of the night, I don't even know what time, crying his head off.  But he didn't really remember this morning so I don't think he was really awake (although he did demand I change his diaper, which I did in record time).  It did result in me sleeping awkwardly outside his room for some amount of time (maybe an hour or two?) with my glasses digging into my face.  But at least I was sleeping.  I figure he must have had some kind of nightmare.

He was a pretty cheerful kid today too; only one timeout around naptime because he was trying to fight me again.

Wearing Daddy's birthday sombrero.  We sent this picture to Daddy in Vegas.

We made it to swim lessons, which we alternately did want to go to and did not want to go to, but finally he agreed.  When we got to the pool I had to carry him into the water.  But seconds after getting in he was grinning with Ms. Stacy and having a good time.  He still is much more comfortable in the shallow end, but he can float on his back much more comfortably, and he "dives" forward more in an actual swimming motion a lot more so at least he looks like he knows what he's doing.

Of course the best "dives" were just before I took this video, and by the time I got my phone out and the video rolling he'd finished his best work.  But oh well - maybe you can sort of get the idea.

He and I both took pretty good naps this afternoon and we woke up and played some more with his blocks, trains, airplanes and various other toys that we found.

The bristle block choo choo train with two hats on sleeping on the bristle block bed.  It was one of the first times he created his own stuff out of bristle blocks.  Normally he makes me make one of the things on the box, but this time we made the bed together and he made the "hats" all by himself.

He decided it would be fun to "climb" the Mommy ramp as he called it.  So I leaned over with my arms out, freaking out he was going to topple sideways or forwards and crack his head open and let him "climb."

Planes, trains and automobiles!
He told me to take a picture of the airplane, but not him because he was going to go play with the choo choo train.  So then I spent the next few minutes tricking him into looking at the camera so I could get him and the plane.  Finally I succeeded.  :)  

We had tostadas for dinner, which he claimed he didn't like but when he tasted them said "mmm, yuuummmmmy!"  And I made him "dessert," which was cinnamon and sugar and butter on a tortilla.

Tomorrow will be even more laid back, hopefully.  We may run to Target in the morning, and hopefully make it to the park, but otherwise we'll just wait to see Daddy after  we wake up from our naps.  ;)

Oh, and we were watching the NBA playoffs a little bit tonight and he said "I love basketball."  I said "you do?"  He said "yeah, I wanna pway some games."  I asked him if he wanted to play in basketball games someday and he said "yeah."  I told him that Mommy and Daddy had played in a LOT of basketball games when they were younger (which by the way did not impress him one little bit).  And then I said something about how the letters on the TV said "win or go home," and that's what happens in the playoffs.  And he said "NO, it says GO DUKE!"  So then I made him say it again:

The good thing about Jayden is that the only time he has hysterics is when he's overly tired.  The bad part is that due to our lives, he does get overly tired from time to time.  He is only two, so the other part of it is that he just doesn't know how to express what's going on and why he's feeling so crazy, so he screams and cries and hits and kicks.  He's a pretty advanced kid, but he's still not old enough to manage all of his emotions/feelings/etc.  So it's pretty easy to not take it personally and to just do what you can to manage the kid.  It feels bad sometimes - I felt like a horrible mom putting him to bed without dinner (and even worse when Carmen later said, "well, we'll see how early he wakes up from being hungry"), but I truly believe there was nothing else I could have done that would have resolved the situation.  His reaction to being exhausted is the main reason I'm so crazy about naptime for him.  It can seem silly and can be really annoying when you're trying to live a regular life, run errands, get things done, but if the alternative is two hours of hysterics?  I'll take a restricted schedule thank you very much!