April 8th, 2011 | Posted by acidicice

Babyice officially threw his first full on tantrum at the day mother yesterday. She always looked at us in disbelief when we related tales of his elaborate tantrums to her. She gets away with murder with him. He sips his medicine from a spoon for her, where we would have to hold him down and squish his cheeks to syringe the medicine into his mouth. We feed him and he spits out his food and throws it, he eats like an angel with her. He screams, cries and pulls away when we try to cut his nails, he sits perfectly still and holds his hands out for her (she has now permanently been delegated this task). I’ve heard this is quite common, that children are angels when not at home and holy terrors with their parents.

Babyice has been throwing tantrums for a while now and the advice given to me was to walk away and ignore him as children will do anything for attention, even negative attention (i.e. scolding). I have tried to practice this and have tried to instill the importance of doing this in Rudi. It is, however, very difficult to do this when he is throwing tantrums in his car seat while trying to squirm his way out of his “restraints”. I have found ways of avoiding outbursts such as replacing an undesirable object he is playing with with another object instead of grabbing it away from him. This works most of the time. It is a little more difficult in the car, but we keep a packet of balloons in the cubby hole (glove compartment) and blowing one up and floating it around in front of him and letting him play with it helps sometimes. Don’t worry, if it bursts we pick up all the pieces and throw it away. We know it’s a choking hazard.

The tantrums are of epic proportions. They include flipping over backwards (we usually catch him in the nick of time, preventing him from banging his head on a hard surface. Not EVERY time though), folding himself in half banging his forehead on the floor, rolling around from side to side, stiffening his body or lying on his back propelling himself around the floor with his legs (almost like that scene from the exorcist) accompanied by screaming and crying (real tears sometimes!). He throws tantrums for the most obvious reason – not getting his own way. If we take something away from him or pick him up when he doesn’t want to be or take him away from something he was busy with (done most likely because there was a potential danger). Yesterday he picked a grape up off the floor at the day mother, she asked him what he had and took it away from him not wanting him to put it in his mouth (he puts *everything* in his mouth) I’m not even sure if this is normal behaviour at this age, but I know kids throw tantrums and I guess this is par for the course. Is this what the terrible twos are like? Or are they worse?

Along with these frustrations come moments of oh-so-cuteness that make your heart melt. Babyice learnt somewhere to say ‘huh uh’ (no). For the longest time I have tried not to say ‘no’ to him because I know there comes a stage where they start saying ‘no’ back to you. I did not anticipate him learning this from someone else (silly me!). So now, if you ask him ANY question he says ‘huh uh’ and shakes his head vigorously. ‘Do you love mommy?’ ‘Huh uh’ *shakes head* ‘Do you want sweeties?’ ‘Huh uh’ *shakes head* ‘Do you want to play?’ ‘Huh uh’ *shakes head* – you get the gist. It is SO cute. I am quite impressed with his ability to differentiate between a statement and a question He doesn’t always respond like that, sometimes he will look at you dumbstruck (especially when you’re trying to show someone else), but once he is on a roll you can’t stop it!

He has also taken to watching TV. We bought him two Baby Genius DVDs a while ago. He couldn’t have cared less about them, but about two weeks ago we put it on and he was GLUED to the TV. Now if we just switch the Playstation on (we play the DVD through the Playstation – not enough AV channels for all our equipment) he gets excited. When he gets excited he kind of stoops down, stretches his arms out to the sides and stamps his feet while squealing in delight. He does exactly the same thing when he gets upset, except he screams and cries instead of squealing.

He has also discovered his penis and has taken to calling it ‘Baba’. Whenever we take his nappy off for bath time his hand goes there immediately and he says ‘Baba’. If Rudi asks him where ‘Baba’ is, he shows him and says ‘Baba’. It’s actually very cute. I am trying to teach him a different word for it, but haven’t quite decided which one we should use. Any suggestions?