By any other name

Today was a kind of tough parenting day. Both kids were in bad moods from the get-go, which meant they were easily frustrated and had a great many tantrums and tears. Example: At one point this morning we were all playing with blocks and robots on the living room rug. Zion wanted Liel and I to use our robots to wake his robot up, and to offer his robot onions and fruit to eat. So we did. But when Zion's robot wanted more onions, and Liel leapt up to get another block to use as pretend onions, Zion freaked out.

"No, no Liel!", he shouted. "I do not want any blocks over here!" He swung at the block in her hands, knocking it away.

"No, no Zion!", shouted Liel.

I tried to sound calm and collected while still making myself heard over them. I'm not sure I succeeded, but eventually I managed to get Zion to hear me explain that Liel was playing pretend in her own way, and that I suggested a compromise wherein Liel could use the block as onions, but wouldn't feed them to Zion's robot. That worked fine, up until Zion's robot wanted more onions, and then all hell broke loose again. At this point Liel decided she wanted to pee (this has become a diversionary tactic of hers when she wants more attention from me, since she can't get on the potty by herself yet). Off to the bathroom. Only Liel kept insisting there was something poking her on the potty. I checked carefully, several times. There wasn't. She startes shreiking about wanting to pee, and refusing to sit on the potty. Either one. As her howls echoed around the bathroom she picked up the small plastic potty and swung it towards the big toilet, accidentally hitting me in the head with it in the process.

"Ouch! Liel!", I shouted. This produced fresh wails and tears. "I'm sorry, sweetie", I said, "I'm not yelling at you, but you hit me with the potty and it hurt."

"No, no! Potty!", she sobbed. She looked pathetic, with her little tear stained face, clutching Fluffy and sobbing in the bathroom.

"Do you want to come sit on my lap?" I asked her.

"No! Don't....want...to!", she cried.

"OK", I said. "Should we go out to the living room?" Thank G-d the boy was playing quietly and happily.

"NO!!! Want POTTY!"

"OK, why don't you sit down then?"

"NOOOOOOOOOO!!"

Eventually I just picked her up and put her on my lap and she calmed down pretty quickly. We returned to the living room, and resumed the battle over the blocks that Zion did NOT want to be onions. Eventually Zion had to go to his room to calm down, which I'm pleased to report worked. After that we had a talk about frustration, and different people and their imaginations and being able to accomodate differnt types of play in the same game.

The rest of the morning was more or less like that, I'm afraid. Things improved after naptime, with only a couple meltdowns.

But at bedtime. Oh, the whole day was worth it. Kids are magical- they can scream and cry, and throw things all day, and then melt your heart in less than a second, causing all frustration to just fade away.

When he was brushing his teeth Zion stopped, looked at me and said "You look pretty". He's never said anything like that to me before.

When I was settling Liel down for the night she sang the Shema all by herself. I know it's not long, but it's in Hebrew and she's not even 2.

Really, they grow up too fast. I'm so lucky to be their mama.