Day of a Thousand Tantrums

Friday morning, I dropped my mother off at the airport at the end of her lovely visit. She came, we shopped, we redecorated my "dining room" (read: room with dining room table normally used for sewing and other crafts) and had a nice, if too-short visit with "Gogo" as the grandkids call her.

Unfortunately, Harrison didn't want Gogo to leave. Though, during her visit, he was standoffish and aloof, like a three-year-old channeling a teenager, when she got out of the car at the airport, he immediately started crying, "Gogo come back!" It got more intense as we drove away.

It was cute and sweet at first. Aww! He misses his Gogo. My reassuring, "It's OK, sweetie!" did nothing. Eventually, after 15 minutes of driving with screaming from the backseat, Mommy was screaming in the front seat as well. I took a breath. Bribery? Sure, it might work.

"Do you want to go shopping?" Yes, it sounds crazy, but Harrison likes to shop. Hutton said, "No shopping! Go home!" OK, if I go ahead with the shopping, that will mean Hutton will be yelling and tantrumming, too. But, unfortunately, Harrison DID want to go shopping, after he heard my suggestion, and then I had to yank it back.

"Sorry, Buddy! Hutton wants to go home. Let's go home." Yeah, that went over well.

Idiot that I am, I suggested Target next. Again, Hutton didn't want to go, but Harrison did. More screaming when I said, "Let's just go home. We'll go to Target later." Only now, the screams were about Target instead of Gogo.

I tried turning it into, "If you're quiet, we'll go to Target." This turned into, "If you will please just stop shrieking, we'll go to Target." As my head pounded and I tried turning the radio up to drown the shrieks, yelling along loudly to whatever song was on. Strangely enough, this didn't work. I tried turning the radio off all together, then I just gave up. Hutton managed to keep the tantrumming Harrison going by hitting him now and then, though I never actually saw him do it.

Did I mention the ride home from the airport is about 40 minutes? Yes, it's a long ride, and listening to a screaming three-year-old makes it that much longer.

Harrison finally stopped screaming and crying when we were about five minutes from home, when he essentially passed out. I enjoyed the silence for an hour while he napped, though my headache lasted for the rest of the day.

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That night, Hutton threw his own super tantrum around bedtime. He wanted to sleep in "Gogo's room" instead of his regular bed in Harrison's room. (Really, it's Hutton's room, so he can sleep in there if he wants, but he usually wants to sleep in Harrison's room.) I explained that Gogo had taken the sheets of the bed, and if he wanted to sleep in there he'd have to sleep in the bunkbed, since I wasn't going to put new sheets on it that night. It seemed to work. He went to sleep in the bed in Harrison's room. I tucked him in.

Then, "Go sleep in Gogo's bed!" Huh. I explained the sheet situation again. He walked into his room and jumped on "Gogo's bed" which still didn't have sheets on it. I explained the sheet situation again, and pointed to the bunk bed, saying that's where he'd have to sleep if he slept in here. Repeat this process five more times, ending with my screaming, "I'm not letting you sleep on the bed with no sheets because if you pee you'll ruin the mattress, and I'm not going to put new sheets on when your regular bed and the bunkbed have sheets on them already!" I finally got Hutton into his bed in Harrison's room, and he stayed there, after four or five more times of getting up to ask about Gogo's bed. I put the clean sheets on "Gogo's bed" yesterday, so now we won't have that problem again. Yeah, no more tantrums about anything. Right.

So, we didn't really have a thousand tantrums. It just felt that way.