Failure . . . and redemption

I have to start off by saying I don't mean complete failure.  But I had a mommy failure moment Tuesday morning and it made me sad.  I just lost my patience.  I am usually incredibly patient.  Jayden learns much more from me being patient rather than me just yelling.  Yelling does nothing for anyone, but particularly Jayden who is very sensitive to that.  (on a side note, our friend Jody just wrote about this book on her blog, The Highly Sensitive Child that discusses children - and people - who are slightly more sensitive than the rest of us.  i promptly bought the book.  i actually don't think jayden is highly sensitive, but i do think he has certain sensitivities that need to be recognized and cared for rather than brushed off and passed over).  But Tuesday I couldn't hang anymore.  And it wasn't even 9:00 am.

We were on our walk and he was being stubborn and throwing a fit.  I literally had to convince him to take every single step, and his steps were small so it was hard work.  And a woman with a dog was following us so I needed to keep moving to keep Jasmine away from the other dog.  And it was already late, and I was on drop-off duty so I was going to be really late to work.  And. And. And.  So I lost my patience.  He withdrew immediately, but once I got some of it out of me, I composed myself and got him moving again.  The walk still took forever and a day, but we made it around the block and back home again without further incident.  And then to Juju's.  I was only 45 minutes late to work, which was a miracle.

Even before this happened I had planned to get home early that day.  On Monday Jayden told me he wanted to paint,  but we didn't have time Monday evening so I promised I would pick him up early so we could paint before dinner.  And I followed through! (finally)  We were home by 4:45 and painting a few minutes later.  At first the painting consisted of me painting and Jayden bossing me around: "now paint daddy."  "no mommy!  not blue, puh-pel!!!"  "no mommy, put jazzy oveh theh!"  In any case, we painted a few paintings (Jayden finally participated), we splashed our feet in the hot tub/waterfall and we threw frisbees.

Tossing the frisbee.  He learned really quickly and has a lot of fun doing it.  I did learn that we should always stand on the same side because catching is in no way his strong suit.  He's more likely to get in the feet or the head (both of which happened) than catch or even just knock it down!

"Wook Mommy!  Take a pit-cher!"  "Of your back, Jayden?!?" "Yeah!"  "Allright, sure."

So our evening ended up being lovely.  He tried to throw a fit again at bedtime, but it was averted.  In part by allowing him to sleep with two of his books, which I caught him "reading" to himself while he was waiting for his light to turn green this morning.  So cute.

I also had the scare of my life on Sunday.  We were at the park (just Jayden and me - Carmen was having lunch with Alex and working), and I told him I was going to get something from the bag.  I looked down and when I looked up he was gone.  I ran in circles for a half a second, then grabbed the bag and made a judgment call and sprinted for the parking lot.  I came over the hill and saw him running towards me, thank goodness.  I was so freaked out, my adrenaline was going and my heart was pounding, but I soon realized he was scared too.  So we both told each other how scared we were and went back to the park for a bit.  I guess he didn't realize where I had put the bag, so he thought I'd gone to the car, so he ran to the car to find me.  It kills me that there was a whole birthday party going on with a gazillion parents and not one of them noticed the toddler running by himself towards the cars.  But I got lucky this time.  Seriously, the worst feeling in the world.

Before the scare I got a picture of this beautiful boy.

The last few days have been rough, besides the two specific incidents above.  I'm struggling at work, so I think my patience is already thin and Jayden has taken to screaming at me, sometimes words and sometimes just shrill noises, as a show of defiance.  If he wants to do something and I say "no," he screams "I doooooo" and then adds a few more noises, "ahhhhh!" and "oooooo!" or whatever else he comes up with.  At first I'd respond, but now I'm trying ignoring.  I've only tried it for a couple of hours now but it seems to be more effective - no attention, positive or negative, when he speaks to me like that.  We'll see.  I'll have to get Carmen to go along with me.  Since he usually has less patience than me, that could be a challenge, but we'll see.  Speaking of Carmen, the other reason for the rough couple of days is that I have been a single mom this week.  Carmen dropped off Monday morning but everything else has been on me.  I honestly don't mind a few days to myself, but there's so little time to get everything done that I just feel like I'm rushing everything and timing everything with Jayden.  I'd love to be able to just play until we're tired.  But instead I have to give him "three more minutes" here and "two more minutes" there.  Having Carmen home wouldn't do much to fix that, but it sometimes makes a small difference because two things can be happening at once (i.e., Carmen can get Jayden's socks and shoes on in the morning while I wash the breakfast dishes).

Today was another challenge.  I had to walk away a couple times, but we made it.  And we even had a little bit of fun.

This is a picture I promise I'll never post in a public place (no Instagram, no Facebook, etc.).  He demanded to wear his underwear (he wanted to wear them to bed but I had to win that fight - I just wasn't ready to do the 3 am soaked in urine bed change) and bring his bike upstairs.  I texted the picture to Carmen who labeled this "the orange jet."

I don't know if you can see this picture - it's really dark.  But Jayden wanted to take a picture with Jazzy, me, his bike and him.  So we got everything in the picture, somehow or another.

Carmen should be home tomorrow (we'll see - initially he was going to be home tonight but that changed), and then we have a fun weekend planned, including a Mariners game on Friday night!  I'm hoping the number of outbursts (by any of us) and times I lose my patience decreases significantly.  It's so demoralizing.

I also realized I didn't get to put up some pictures that my sister sent me from the Fourth of July weekend: