We don’t ALL scream for Ice Cream
It’s Sunday afternoon and Do It All Daddy decides that we should go for a walk to a local ice cream cafe. I argued that I should stay home because if you’ve read this, then you know that I’m starting Booty Camp this week, and I really don’t think that having delicious Italian ice cream is good for my cause.
Anyway nobody liked my idea – me staying home alone while they all went for ice cream – so I went too. I figured the walk would help and I thought, “Hey, I’ll order a crepe with bananas, strawberries and vanilla ice cream, and then I won’t have dinner.” Why am I fat, you ask? At least I had fruit.
So my two year old – cutest kid in the world, except for my other kid of course – decides that she wants to walk, and push her “baby’s” stroller.
All.The.Way. So a walk that normally takes 10 minutes took about 30.
Longest walk in history… especially since she insists on walking first. A born leader.
We were walking so slow that I was able to tweet:
We were about a block and a half from the café and she decides that she’s going to have a typical toddler tantrum. Terrible Twos. I’m living it.
She starts to scream. She is crying, stomping her feet, whipping her baby stroller everywhere, throwing it, hitting it. She’s putting on a proper show. You name it – if it’s tantrum behaviour – she’s doing it. The only thing she didn’t do was throw herself on the floor. Maybe next time.
This is all happening outside, on the sidewalk. Families are happily riding their bikes past us, a woman with her groceries smiles at us, cars slow down – it’s The Alexandra Show. It was awesome. This show was for a reason that we know nothing about. Luckily (for me) I was in a pretty good mood and used my fabulous extra calm voice:
“Are you ok?”
“You’re going to break your baby’s stroller.”
“Can you please tell mommy what’s wrong?”
“Can I help you with something?”
“Do you want to go back home?”
“You don’t want to go for ice cream?”
Every answer was, “No!” SURPRISE! Her favourite word.
Do It All Daddy tried to pick her up to carry her and that damn baby stroller, but she was fighting him too much, so I just told them to take the bloody stroller and go ahead to have ice cream. I was prepared to stay with her to ride it out. I strongly believe that, usually, you just need to let them get it out of their systems. So I told her, “Let it all out – don’t hold back. Tell me how you really feel.” I sat down and of course I tweeted:
And I got these responses:
All the while she was crying and shouting. I actually think the walk was stressful for her. The baby stroller wasn’t doing too well on the city sidewalks, and you know she wanted to lead us. Anyway, I decided to film her as she was calming down. I held my iPhone on my knee facing her, and I looked straight ahead, away from her – the whole time watching her from the corner of my eye. Here’s my footage:
She calmed herself down. She walked over to me when she was ready. We then peacefully walked the rest of the way, met the others, sat on the patio, they had ice cream, I had dinner, then she peed on the floor… it was a wonderful afternoon. It really was.
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Xiuzo