terrible twos

Going into Joseph’s room on Sunday night and finding him naked and asleep in his crib was cute.  Today it has turned into a major pain.  When I put him down for his nap this afternoon he was playing so quietly I left him in there a little longer than I might otherwise when he isn’t sleeping.  When I finally went into his room to rescue him from the failed nap attempt I discovered that he had taken his pants and diaper off, and he had peed in his crib.  Fortunately none of his blankets or stuffed animals had been hit, but it wasn’t pretty. 

I tried to reprimand him but he didn’t seem to realize he had done anything wrong.  We have been talking about introducing a “time out” and I decided that this was a good opportunity.  I made him stand in the corner of his room while I slowly changed the sheets on his crib, put his clothes in the laundry bin, and made his bed.  I dragged this out a little for punishment, but he just stood there looking cute and didn’t seem to mind the time out zone.

The missed naps are still a thorn in my side.  Yesterday he had a long late nap, and he was up until 11pm babbling in his crib.  Today he didn’t nap and crashed at a decent time this evening, but he was really fussy all evening, much worse than usual, and we felt that he was acting tired.  The doctor confirmed yesterday that it is much too early to consider giving up on naps, that sleep is extremely important at this age.  So we’ll keep plugging away, even though he won’t nap at least a couple times a week.

A few weeks ago I started keeping track of his missed naps looking for trends.  He hasn’t napped five times since I started tracking it.  Three were on weekends, and initially I thought that perhaps it was a weekend thing, when the days are less structured, we are probably making more noise around the house during nap time since Danielle and I may be talking, or we’re more likely to have someone over.  But he has also missed a couple on weekdays recently so I think that theory doesn’t address it all.

The struggle with napping is similar to the struggle I had with meal times a couple months ago.  When I first left work, meal times were a nightmare.  He did not want to sit in his chair and he when he did he often wouldn’t eat much.  He snacked a lot and ate a lot at times, enough that we weren’t worried about him starving.  But it was a real pain.  Within a couple weeks I had him turned around completely and now meals are usually a lot of fun.  I scaled back on the snacks, got him engaged in making the food, and allowed him to bring toys to the table.  After a little while of that we restricted him to one toy or book at the table, and he often doesn’t have any.  It has worked great, and I keep hoping that I will stumble upon a couple small but critical pieces to the puzzle that will solve the sleeping issue like I did with the meals.

More than one person has told me that the terrible twos are for real, but that they generally start at around one and a half, and last until maybe four years old – basically the span in which they can understand a lot and start to assert themselves but aren’t yet old enough to reason.  Joseph has been so easy-going that I thought that we might breeze through the terrible twos.  Then last week he started to throw more fits and get more stubborn more often.  This was, ironically, the week that started two days after his second birthday. 

I still think he is less fussy than most kids his age - his outbursts are often minor and there might be only one or two a day.  And they pretty much only happen when I am trying to get him to do something he doesn’t want to do:  stay out of the street, put away a toy, wash his hair.  For a few days in a row last week he had a couple more outbursts than usual, and I thought it was a harbinger of the terrible twos.  Then it subsided, and we had several days of great behavior.  This evening was particularly rough, but we never know if he is being bothered by a molar coming in, something he ate, hungry, tired, or what.

The flip side on any challenges like these is that he is developing in leaps and bounds.  His comprehension is exploding and that makes it so fun for me introducing new things to him.  He is climbing and getting into new things at the playground, almost speaking in sentences at times, counting, showing a great interest in potty training, singing, doing puzzles…

Maybe he’s just going through a growth spurt or had a couple isolated fussy days.  The one certainty is that if we do have a breakthrough of some sort in his development, it will be right when the baby comes and that will throw everything upside down again.