Where to begin...

Wow, it's been a month since I've posted.  This is due to the fact that I'm way too tired at the end of the day and just didn't have the energy to talk about my little maniac.  Recalling it all would just make me that more tired.  I wanted to blog our trip to the cottage and several other things, but oh well, I'll try to be more diligent in the future.  During the day I plan what I will write so that it's easier and faster when I sit down to do it in the evening, but I just never sit down to do it.  Brendan is more than energy sapping, he is a force to be reckoned with...I can only hope and pray that it can't get much worse.  I'm sure he's right on par with many other toddlers, but today I jokingly described him as the "devil in disguise".  Maybe I wasn't joking, who knows.  Brendan spends a lot of time in the time-out chair (thank goodness it has buckles) at 18-months-old.  He loves to hit, and it's not just the "I'm so frustrated that we can't communicate, so I'm going to hit you" hitting, it's to hurt us.  Seriously.  He knows exactly what he's doing.  He's seen that it actually hurts us, I've literally cried from the pain and said ouch.  He sees this and just laughs, and he continues to do it.  He slaps HARD for a little guy.  It's so frustrating.  As the doctor said, don't react (oh my goodness, that has to be THE hardest thing in the world to do), tell him simply no hitting (or pulling down the vertical blinds), and put him in time-out.  Don't over-explain and don't hug him or explain anything when the time-out is over, just unbuckle him.  Well, I'm not reacting and I'm consistently putting him in time-out.  It's a battle that I WILL WIN.  Hitting like that is unacceptable.  What's even more frustrating is that he is laughing hysterically as we put him in time-out. 

Tonight while bringing him from the bathtub into his room to get diapered and pajamas on, he grabbed the chunk of skin underneath my eye and held onto it with a death grip.  He was pulling the skin and gripping so hard, I couldn't see, literally.  I wanted to react.  I wanted to scream.  I wanted to spank him.  I wanted to just leave him right there and leave.  But I didn't.  I didn't react.  I told him to please let go and I tried to distract him with a song.  I didn't cry even though the pain was awful, I just wanted to burst into tears, but I didn't.  As I sit here typing, it still hurts, and it's making me sad and frustrated all over again.  He's just so intense.  He is so strong willed.  It can be confusing because at times he's the sweetest boy in the world, giving me big, sloppy kisses on the lips and blowing me kisses just because.  But it seems like the sweet boy appears less and less and his evil twin is appearing more and more. 

I'm telling myself that it's just a boy toddler phase that he's going through right now and that it will pass.  I also pray to God for extra strength, extra patience, and extra understanding.  And I remind myself that he is a gift and I'm blessed to have him, because I know so many people who are trying so hard to have a baby and keep miscarrying, and I think about my friends who lost their 9-month-old son.  So even though B is awful 80% of the time, I am thankful to have him in my life, because I really couldn't imagine my life without him.

I will say that watching him grow is amazing.  The new words that come out of his mouth crack me up and excite me, "mihee" (Mickey, as in Mickey Mouse), "shoe", "keys", "chee" (cheese), "dow" (down), "oo" (poop), "wow", "whoa", "ow", and a bunch of others that I can't recall at the moment.  Oh! "choo choo" is very cute, and so is "boat".  It's fun to watch him explore and discover things.  And the things he mimics are too cute.  He's a little person, a little me!  The vacuuming, the wiping of his mouth with a napkin, the every day things.  I was driving and I've become very tame in how I talk in the car, the worst I now say is "geez" (even though I'm sure it comes out very angry), my little parrot in the backseat repeats after me, "geez!". 

He went down at his normal time (7:00) and is still awake right now at 8:15, banging his feet against the crib slats, making it sound like he has an elephant in bed with him.  He must be over tired...hardly any napping and a lot of food and running around at a forest preserve all day must've done it to him, at least he's not screaming and crying.  (I'm dreading moving him to a toddler bed.)

That was a long post, but a very cathartic one, hopefully it gets me back on track with blogging.