UNTITLED because I don’t know what to say…

Don’t get me wrong – 95% of the time Jamie is the most adorable, cutest, sweetest cuddle-bug under the sun… and I also need to emphasize how much I love him.  I love him more than words can say.  I won’t trade him for 10 well-behaved, non-tantrummy kids and a billion dollars… not even if you throw a villa in Italy in the mix.

BUT… yes a “but” is inevitable in today’s blog post… some days are just worse than the rest.  Last night was an utter failure in my life as a parent.  It started last night when my little dude didn’t want to have his bath and the mother of all tantrums happened… then he didn’t want to get dressed… tantrum.  We’ll go into the nature of his tantrums a little bit later.

Thank goodness then 7pm arrived and Jamie went to bed and drifted off to sleep within 15 minutes.  Ah my boy was just tired, now me and daddy can have a blissful cup of coffee and have some relaxing time and then go to Lala-land ourselves.  Bliss… not!

Because since I went to bed at 9:30 and 11:30 he woke up twice.  All good and dandy I thought, he went to sleep again and we will have a peaceful night further.  Then midnight arrived and he woke up again wanting juice and I’m sorry I’m not going to allow juice in the middle of the night, if he is thirsty he can have some water.  Then all hell broke lose when I offered him water and a shit fit erupted because of him wanting juice.  Getting back to the nature of Jamie’s tantrums – he screams at the top of his voice, he becomes violent – shoving me out of his way, hitting, slapping and gnawing at me if he can, throwing stuff, rage written all over his face. Ignoring doesn’t help, a hiding doesn’t help, water in his face (yes hubby even tried this once out of desperation) doesn’t work, sweet talking doesn’t work.  The only thing that will work at that stage is giving him what he wants, and I’m not going to give in!

So last night at midnight I ignored him when the tantrum started, every 10 minutes I offered him water as I know he must have been thirsty after all the screaming, and every time he would attack me, shove me, hit me to get me out of his way, hubby also tried a couple of times.  This lasted about an hour… I think… it just felt like ages.  Then hubby offered to pick him up again and give him water and this time he accepted and calmed down while falling asleep with him.

I on the other hand cried myself to sleep eventually after 2 somewhere, the-silent-stream-down-my-face-and-wet-my-pillow-but-don’t-disturb-anyone-in-the-household kind of tears.

Woke again at 5… lied down with me again, but didn’t sleep again… Tantrum again when had to dress for school.

THEN

All sweetness – “Thank you for my Bovril broodjie, mamma”, “Bye Bye Mamma”, “Love you Mamma”.  Hop skip and jump into school, no problemo further, Mamma.

Oh dear, where have I gone wrong? Don’t know if I should laugh about it or cry… think the tears of fatigue and frustration is going to win today.

DISCLAIMERS

1. This is one tired mommy with no sense of humour or humanity today – any person who is going to leave a comment in the line of “my child never throws tantrums and sleeps like an angel” is risking too much here today… I won’t elaborate.
2. Jamie, if you ever get to read my blog one day as an adult – you are responsible for every wrinkle and grey hair I have.  May your children one day be the worst kind of little terrorists… unless they visit gramps and gran of course.

Rocking his leather jacket!

Oh man, I’ve bought this jacket for Jamie when he was just a few month’s old – it’s a 1 to 2-year old fit. Last winter he simply refused to wear it, now that he’s almost 3 and yesterday in scorching hot weather he decided now is the time to wear it… ai! Hopefully it will still fit him when the weather gets cooler, otherwise I’ll just have to keep it for his little sister or brother one day… LOL

31 Months… 2 Years & 7 Months … Big Boy !

I can’t wrap my head around the idea of Jamie growing up so quickly.  Time just doesn’t stand still, and while Jamie’s growing up, we’re all getting older by the minute, and it feels like the time is going faster the older I get.

Yes, so today my amazing, blue-eyed boy is another month older.  Things are going better at school – no more tears in the morning, and it seems like he adores his teacher, Marlene, as he talks a lot about her and wants to draw / paint her pictures over the weekends.  I can also see that there’s a lot of development in Jamie since he started attending her class.  My boy is getting so clever.

We also enrolled Jamie in a Monkeynastix class which he really enjoys.  It gives my busy-body angel some chance to jump around, have some fun and burn off some of that energy.  Mondays are such a highlight in his week, he usually comes home happy and proud of his Monkeynastix participation sticker and shows us what he did that day.

Jamie is still such a loving little creature and gives hugs, kisses and cuddles to us daily.  He still requests group hugs with me and his daddy when we all hug and kiss each other – it feels great and is such a special moment every single time.  I live for all these moments of affection – I engrave it in my memories every single time, because I know one day he’s going to be a typical boy and the amount of hugs and kisses I get will decrease.

This month Jamie developed a love for Cars, Maters Tall Tales in particular which is short 5 minute stories.  So Thomas, Barney & Mickey took a bit of a backseat hehe.  He also started enjoying puzzles.  He already loved building virtual  puzzles on the iPad, but has recently started building real-life ones.  Hubby bought him the cutest 6-piece Cars puzzles and I bought him the larger 12- and 20-piece puzzles which I must build for him which he has a great time watching… and then breaking them apart.

Oh we have lots of chitty chats.  My boy is a real talker.  Love how he conveys his thoughts.  So many new words, so many new sentences, and he constructed his first full sentence or rather question as well this past month when he asked “Is Pappa ‘n seuntjie?” (Is daddy a boy?).  Haha and that reminds me of a whole different story – I’m trying to teach Jamie that I’m a girl, and daddy’s a boy – so that he can start to differentiate genders, but Jamie can’t wrap his little head around mommy being a girl, he insists he wants mommy to be a boy.  My little funny bunny ❤

So after 31 months we’re still having a lot of fun, still a lot of happiness in our house, so many laughs, giggles and laughs.  So many blessings. We’re so lucky.

Happy 31 months, my beautiful, beautiful boy.  You fill my heart with joy ❤

 

 

 

Hmmm Cupcakes

I live for my weekends.  And I always try to do at least one special thing with Jamie every weekend – some special time with my boy, like painting, drawing, making play dough or moon sand, just a special activity of some sort.

Now my boy has a few favorite things to do.  He adores being creative, he enjoys being messy and he loves rough play with his daddy, but one of his ultimate favorites is helping me in the kitchen.  So Sunday after Jamie got excited when he saw my new silicone mat and baking pan, and after he charmed an old lady on Saturday out of her cupcake at Spar, I decided that baking cupcakes is just the right activity for after his sleep.  The promise of baking was enough to get him into bed and fast asleep within 20 minutes 🙂

So while he was sleeping I did all the prep work and got the ingredients ready.  When he woke up I had his chef’s hat (thanks Aunty Jess) ready and he was out of his skin of happiness when he put it on.

Then we got baking, and I got to snap some pictures too, hehe which caused me to focus a bit on my camera… which in turn caused Jamie to dump too much salt in the mixture, and I didn’t see it until we tasted it later on.

When the cupcakes came out of the oven and cooled down it was time for icing the cupcakes, and this is where Jamie lost his focus completely munching the icing and sweetie decorations instead of helping!

It was a fun afternoon spent with my angel-boy… loved every minute of it! And to tell you the truth, I’m thankful for the extra salt in the cupcakes – that way they were no temptation to my diet 😀

 

 

Jamie says… #1

I really want to remember all the cute things Jamie says, so I’m going to jot it down as we go along.

 

Last night Jamie gave a gigantic burp, paused for a second, and then exclaimed in a loud voice “Varkie!”

 

Last weekend I asked Jamie what he wants to eat.  He replied with: “kossies”.  Haha, I was just surprised that he didn’t say Flings or nannas!
I then asked him, but what type of food he wants, and he answered me “bacon”.  Now every time I ask him what he wants he says bacon.  Definitely his mom and dad’s child!

School Theme Work

I am so proud of my boy’tjie! They started theme work at school last week.  I had a whole list of stationary I had to send to the school, including flip files and Marelene (Jamie’s teacher) files every week’s projects and then sends the flip file home at the end of the week so that we can see what they did.

Every week they have a different theme, and learn different songs and rhymes, different projects etc.  Last week’s theme was “My School” and Jamie coloured his picture of the school so well, and loved the songs he learned.

Love the first page of the file with his precious little hand prints ❤