Realization

Yesterday was just one of those days that every parent with a 2-year old goes through. There was hardly a minute where I wasn't ready to hang him out in a tree for a little while. The day started at 4:30 (yes, as in am). Tavita woke from a nightmare, can't blame the poor kid for that, but once he calmed down rather than going back to sleep he wanted to read books, eat cereal, and play. The ENTIRE day consisted of him getting into stuff, tearing stuff apart, throwing fits (I'm one of those mean moms that won't let him have candy for breakfast, a 3rd orange in 2 hrs, run out in the 30 degree weather with nothing but his underwear on). Long story short, I was exhausted by the end of the day. I put the kids to bed (my favorite time of day by the way) and set to the task of cleaning a torn apart house. I had just finished cleaning, cut myself a big slice of pumpkin roll (if I really was a single mom, I'd weigh 300lbs. Every night Junior has been gone, I eat some treat at the end of the day to destress), had the heating pad all warmed to relax my siatic nerve, and was one step away from that moment of euphoria when I can sit down and say, "Ahh, the day is done." I gathered my treat and was about to head to the couch when I heard a dreaded "thump." Not dreaded in that I thought someone was hurt but in that I knew someone was still awake.
I head upstairs and there's Tavita sitting at the top of the stairs draped in floss with trails of floss everywhere. I go in his bedroom to find deodorant all over the place, books strewn around, the entire contents of an almost full bottle of fish food in with "Soopy" the fish, and just an overall minor disaster. I looked at him and glared. He jsut gave me a grin and said, "Hi, Mommy." While trying to keep my voice down (both to keep my cool and to keep from waking his two sleeping siblings) very firmly told him to get in bed NOW! He responded with a very innocent, "Okay Mommy." I was trying to clean the mess up and asked him where his binky was. He told me he didn't know then got a big grin and ran up to me, while pointing to his ear said, "Here, check here." We always play a game with him when he can't find his binky that it's is stuck in his ear and we pull it out, it's one his favorite games. I grumbled that it wasn't the time for it and what he did was very naughty. Again he gets and innocent look of "Why I naughty, I feed fishy." I was not in the mood to discuss anything, I simply told him that once he's put to bed it's not okay to get out. I cleaned the mess, put him to bed, shut the door, and went downstairs.
As I sat and thought more about it, I realized he probably didn't think what he did was all to naughty. Sure it's wrong for him to get out of bed, but other than that the resulting mess was simply him exploring the world around him. The fish was hungry, so he figured he'd feed it. Wanted to read books so he did. The deodorant smelled good, and you can't really see it so he was just helping the room smell better. The floss was very interesting, it just kept coming and coming from this tiny little box. I realized that I need to take more time to think on a 2-year old's level before flying off the handle, or in this case just ignoring them all together. The world looks and functions compltetly different in their eyes. I might be a lot more relaxed and happy in life if I took the time to realize how facinating floss really can be.

Random sidenote: Brayden was eating an apple today. I overheard him, while giving his apple a good examination, "You're going down apple bah ha ha"