So we dance...

I LOVE to dance, but I haven't done it in a while. I don't mean going dancing, I like that too, but those days are long gone, so I dance at home. It makes me feel good and happy. Well today I really needed to feel happy, so we put on Fergie and danced. And it provided me a solid 30 minutes of happy children on a day when Shane was anything but happy.

I can safely say that today was Shane's worse day ever. I'm partly to blame. The day started fine, beautiful weather, so we loaded up and went to Manito Park. Shane screamed for 10 minutes of the ride because he didn't like any of the 3 hats I grabbed for him. It was a bit cold and I didn't think to pull out the gloves yet, so Myann's poor hands turned to blue popsicles. So after about 30 minutes we went home. I put Myann down for a nap and let Shane watch a movie for an hour before he had lil' sluggers. 15 minutes before it was time to go (1:00pm), Shane started melting down. A smart mom would have skipped class and put him down for a nap, even though he doesn't nap much anymore. I tried to say no baseball, but the tantrum got worse at that. So rather than staying home with a screaming child, I gave in and woke Myann up and loaded Anders and off we went to baseball. My hope was that Shane's mood would improve - boy was I wrong. We showed up to class late, naturally, and Shane refused to participate. At this point Myann is being good as I give her raisins, which she is spilling everywhere. Anders is screaming, he had been asleep for 3 hours and woke up very hungry. And Shane is sulking and loudly complaining. So I said I was not going to sit here and juggle all 3 if he was not going to participate. After too many chances, I head out the door with Shane screaming at the top of his lungs. I wrestled him into his car seat and I mean wrestled. He likely has a few bruises on him, but it seeemed better than a toddler bouncing around a moving car. How foolish of me, because no sooner did we get down the road, Shane had undone his car seat and is in my ear screaming at me. Why again did we teach him how to get out of his car seat? I tried to safely pull over, did, and then yet again began the wrestling match. This time I lost, and knew it didn't matter because he would just undo it again. So to calm the tantrum I called my mom and thought maybe Grandma could reason with him. It took a while, but he calmed down and got in his seat. He stayed there for the ride home, but he also fell asleep. The rest of the night consisted of off and on tantrums. I think I need to finally read the book Redirecting Your Child's Behavior. I took the class after Myann was born, but Shane was so good, I never practiced what I learned. I need to review my class notes apparently.

When Brian got home he went to talk to Shane about the day. They had a good talk because Shane told his daddy that he didn't like baseball because he was only 3 1/2 and the rest of the kids are 4 and bigger than he is. He said they were doing sliding and he couldn't slide yet. Shane gave a lot of details to Brian. Why couldn't he have told me all this today? That info would have helped, but it doesn't explain all the tantrums, just the one. Starting next week, I will take him alone, so hopefully that will help him feel more comfortable in the class.