That said, let me log my complaint. I'm getting impatient. I want the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I'd settle for seeing the rainbow. It's been almost 18 months and we're STILL dealing with this ridiculously resilient fussiness. I haven't hung out with that many other parents with their babies for full days to see how their kids cope with being awake. BUT, of the parents with babies that I do know, they don't seem to want to leave their children as much as we do. This leads me to the conclusion that either Jett is especially difficult, or we're just total pansies. My bets are that it's the former.
The thing is, with a kid, we have a family now. And ideally, we'd like to go out with our child, and do things together as a family. But Jett is really clingy and really sensitive to the word "no" right now and easily tired and often fussy and it's rather demotivating to go out and do anything longer than a trip to the grocery store. I took him out to Target this weekend and after twenty minutes, he was crying to be held. So here I am, pushing a cart and carrying my child at the same time. Stupid. And I'm not one to typically give in to Jett. No, you can sit. But when we're in public, it's rather hard to just let him cry it out as I tend to give in to the (perceived) peer pressure of the dirty looks from other patrons. And tonight, we tried to go out to dinner. We were eating by the time his normal dinner would be served, and were home thirty minutes before normal bedtime. And he was a mess. I don't know if he's teething or what's going on (we're well-recovered from hand-foot-and-mouth disease this week) but he's just so, so trying. Kenny and I are grateful that he's at an age now where he can effectively communicate with us, with the head-nodding and shaking and whatnot, and almost speaking! But we still can't reason with him...obviously...he's only a year-and-a-half old. It's just hard though because he understands what we're asking him, and can accommodate requests, but at the same time, he's developing this personality and can choose NOT to accommodate requests, and doesn't understand the reasons why we say no when we say no. If the answer is no, he just loses his shit. End of story. And that just makes us sigh. I'm soooooooooooooooooo over hearing a child scream.
This morning, we let the nanny come pick Jett up, and I promptly climbed right back into bed and went to sleep. And while sleeping in, without a care in the world, I woke up having thought I'd heard a baby cry, twice. SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO annoying. I can't even get sleep when there isn't a baby in the house. Point of this story is that I'm ready (and Kenny is right there with me) to be out of this whole baby mode. Some people love it, and there are super cute things that I will miss, but I'm quite ready to move on to the next stage. For even while the next stage might not be better (there's no guarantee that older = better, and with our luck, it's never the case), but it will at least be different. He'll be a little bit better able to deal with "no" and a little bit better able to sleep, and understand what's expected in a public outing...
To keep it all in perspective, Jett's still a great son and I think he's going to be a super cool kid. It could just be easier. But it could be worse. He could be sick. Really sick. Or he could be 3 months old again....at least we're not there anymore! It's just discouraging that at 18 months, I'm already having visions of Jett going off to college. I think it's just two extremes colliding - I'm rather lazy and like my do-nothing time, and Jett is rather needy and likes to take up every minute of my former do-nothing time...I really look forward to the days when he plays by himself - which is nonexistent now. And the time we do get to ourselves, during naptime or on a day like today where we're home and he's in school or with the nanny, we get caught up on house chores. Kenny finished up some home improvement projects and I disinfected every single toy in the house and playroom. We should have gone out to lunch and seen a movie as a re-do of our anniversary last weekend.
As if to confirm our troubles, the nanny commented that he had a random 30-minute break-down today, where he just non-stop cried for seemingly no reason. And we get to come home to this every night...I think we're just in a slump and need to sort of reset. Or just push ahead and wait for what the next stage brings. Currently, this parenting gig is 80% tedious, and 20% fun with this kid. I'm looking forward to 20/80, but would settle for even just 50/50. Here's to what's next!!
The thing is, with a kid, we have a family now. And ideally, we'd like to go out with our child, and do things together as a family. But Jett is really clingy and really sensitive to the word "no" right now and easily tired and often fussy and it's rather demotivating to go out and do anything longer than a trip to the grocery store. I took him out to Target this weekend and after twenty minutes, he was crying to be held. So here I am, pushing a cart and carrying my child at the same time. Stupid. And I'm not one to typically give in to Jett. No, you can sit. But when we're in public, it's rather hard to just let him cry it out as I tend to give in to the (perceived) peer pressure of the dirty looks from other patrons. And tonight, we tried to go out to dinner. We were eating by the time his normal dinner would be served, and were home thirty minutes before normal bedtime. And he was a mess. I don't know if he's teething or what's going on (we're well-recovered from hand-foot-and-mouth disease this week) but he's just so, so trying. Kenny and I are grateful that he's at an age now where he can effectively communicate with us, with the head-nodding and shaking and whatnot, and almost speaking! But we still can't reason with him...obviously...he's only a year-and-a-half old. It's just hard though because he understands what we're asking him, and can accommodate requests, but at the same time, he's developing this personality and can choose NOT to accommodate requests, and doesn't understand the reasons why we say no when we say no. If the answer is no, he just loses his shit. End of story. And that just makes us sigh. I'm soooooooooooooooooo over hearing a child scream.
This morning, we let the nanny come pick Jett up, and I promptly climbed right back into bed and went to sleep. And while sleeping in, without a care in the world, I woke up having thought I'd heard a baby cry, twice. SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO annoying. I can't even get sleep when there isn't a baby in the house. Point of this story is that I'm ready (and Kenny is right there with me) to be out of this whole baby mode. Some people love it, and there are super cute things that I will miss, but I'm quite ready to move on to the next stage. For even while the next stage might not be better (there's no guarantee that older = better, and with our luck, it's never the case), but it will at least be different. He'll be a little bit better able to deal with "no" and a little bit better able to sleep, and understand what's expected in a public outing...
To keep it all in perspective, Jett's still a great son and I think he's going to be a super cool kid. It could just be easier. But it could be worse. He could be sick. Really sick. Or he could be 3 months old again....at least we're not there anymore! It's just discouraging that at 18 months, I'm already having visions of Jett going off to college. I think it's just two extremes colliding - I'm rather lazy and like my do-nothing time, and Jett is rather needy and likes to take up every minute of my former do-nothing time...I really look forward to the days when he plays by himself - which is nonexistent now. And the time we do get to ourselves, during naptime or on a day like today where we're home and he's in school or with the nanny, we get caught up on house chores. Kenny finished up some home improvement projects and I disinfected every single toy in the house and playroom. We should have gone out to lunch and seen a movie as a re-do of our anniversary last weekend.
As if to confirm our troubles, the nanny commented that he had a random 30-minute break-down today, where he just non-stop cried for seemingly no reason. And we get to come home to this every night...I think we're just in a slump and need to sort of reset. Or just push ahead and wait for what the next stage brings. Currently, this parenting gig is 80% tedious, and 20% fun with this kid. I'm looking forward to 20/80, but would settle for even just 50/50. Here's to what's next!!
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