"You're Driving Me Crazy!"

I have to admit that lately I haven't been the most loving or patient mother in the world. In fact, about every ten minutes it seems like I am saying to one boy or the other, "You're driving me crazy!"

A couple of weeks ago Peter deviated somewhat from his sleep schedule so before I totally forced it, I decided to check online and find out how much I should expect him to sleep. I thought that perhaps he was at an age where the sleep schedule changed. The main bit of information about his age, however, was not about sleep, (turns out he should be maintaining the exact schedule he was on, and ever since then he has been,) but about separation anxiety. I had noticed that he was a little more clingy than normal, but it didn't seem to be too big of a deal.

Yet.

Since then he wants me to hold him constantly and fusses more than ever if I even look in a different direction. It really is driving me crazy. And that is a fact I am not quiet about.

The other thing Peter has been doing these past few days is refusing to eat. He will sit in the high chair for about two bites. Then he decides that he wants to squirm around and play. If I have the highchair anywhere near the table, he climbs onto it. If I have the highchair in the middle of a room somewhere he gets on the tray and looks over the edge as if debating whether or not he should jump! I try strapping him in, but he even squirms his way out of that! So basically I have this baby who insists on being held constantly and refuses to sit still long enough to even eat! AHHH!

Then there is Ammon. Poor boy probably feels like he can't do anything right. I have to tell him about ten times before he does ANYTHING I ask him to do and I get so impatient with him these days. He is big enough to feed himself, put on his shoes and jacket by himself when we get ready for school, get his backpack himself, etc. But he always wants me to do everything for him. I think the poor boy just wants more one on one time with someone. He basically is at the age where he gets ignored because he can play by himself. There are so many other demands that it is easy to forget that just because he can entertain himself, doesn't mean he wants to be left alone ALL day EVERY day. But still, it's been hard to do it all - and yesterday was especially rough because I wasn't feeling well. I think my ten minute muttering turned into an every-other minute thing.

So this morning, I was passing out my frustrated exclamation to both of them - although starting to realize how constant a statement it was getting to be and that I really needed to bite it back. I asked Ammon to turn off the TV because we were going upstairs. Instead, he walked over to the computer and pushed the power button to turn it off. Ammon used to turn the computer off like this all the time and so I finally sat down with him and explained that he either had to turn it off through the start menu (which he is certainly computer savvy enough to do) or just leave it on. Since he knew this, I was so frustrated that he turned the computer off wrong and said, (as I have been so often,) "You're driving me crazy!!!"

Ammon just turned around, looked at me and said, "Mommy, YOU'RE driving ME crazy!"

I think I deserved it.