Somewhere My Mother Is Laughing At Me

When I was a kid there were two words that could describe me:  stubborn and impatient.  Throw in my spectacular temper (I'm a redhead, after all) and I was what could be referred to as a "spitfire."  I'm sure my mother had other, more colorful, words for it.

While I should have anticipated that at least one of my children would also be a redhead, when I gave birth to Jamie, I was just as surprised as the doctors and nurses.  I should have known then what was headed my way, but apparently I was too busy basking in the glow of no longer having a baby taking up residence in my body to think ahead.

Jamie is now 15 months old and has reached a stage of development that I learned to hate when Liam was little.  See, right about now kids figure out they have an opinion about something.  However, because they can't tell you what it is they've got an opinion about, if you do not develop a keen sense of ESP, they go from zero to tantrum in about a nanosecond.  This continues until around 18 or 19 months or until they have enough language to smooth communications.

As I said, I disliked this stage with Liam.  In fact, it was almost worse than Year 3 was.  It's hard to judge the winner of that suck matchup.  But, whatever the case, I wasn't exactly looking forward to surviving it again.  So, we've arrived at this place and Jamie's intrinsic personality is complicating things.

Remember "stubborn" and "impatient" and "temper?"  Well, much to what I'm sure is my mother's amusement, Jamie inherited those little traits and I am being handily paid back for all the grief I gave my own mother.  Jamie has quite the little temper on him and when he gets told no (when I finally manage to get through to him - hello, stubborn!) he throws himself on the floor and cries and flails.  It's extra special fun.  Almost every night when I'm fixing his dinner, he stands at my feet and shrieks at me.  He follows me from fridge to stove and back again, shrieking all the while, because I'm just not fast enough, dammit.

Needless to say this is testing the limits of my patience.  Luckily for him, I managed to stretch those limits awhile back.  I think God may have known what he was doing by giving me the one with the temper the second time around - even if he was snickering at me for not anticipating this little lesson in paybacks.

One other thing - Mom?  Thanks for keeping your temper with me as much as you did.  I'm learning what a challenge that must have been.