Hell Week and Temper Tantrums

During our lunch break, right before we got out of the car to go back inside the building, my husband did the most delicious thing ever. He ran his fingers through my hair on the back of my head, gripped and tugged gently. Over and over again. For about four minutes. I've always loved it when he did that, and it's been a while. Wow. Just thinking about how good that felt relaxes me. Felt like he was pulling out all my tension. Better than a back rub, and I think that after we were married, in those two precious months before Ben started growing in my belly, my dear husband did that to my hair every night... most likely leading to the baby in the belly.

This has been a week from hell. That whole pregnancy thing has hit me like a sledgehammer with fatigue, nausea, irritability, etc. Every hour has been a struggle. And now it's almost over, and I'm so grateful.

I'm also grateful that my boss is coming back from vacation on Monday. Besides being one of my best friends, she also makes my job a lot easier at work. It's amazing how much she shields from me that I had to deal with this week.

Husband and I had a discussion yesterday about whether or not Ben has had a temper tantrum yet, and what that would look like, and what we would do. We decided that although he's had what we call meltdowns, it's not the true temper tantrums that I remember. But maybe it's because we usually give in. Let me clarify. He'll have meltdowns if we don't give him something that he wants Right That Moment. He wants a bottle NOW, but he has to wait sixty seconds for it to finish heating in the microwave. He wants to play with the saw that daddy left out, but we say no and redirect him to something else. He screams and hollers and cries big tears, but only for about a minute.

And that's not what I remember about temper tantrums. I remember the TTs as a period of time when the child is inconsolable, unable to be reasoned with, for minutes at a time. I think of a toddler throwing himself down on the ground, kicking and screaming, using his whole body to illustrate just how darn mad he is. Am I wrong? Or can meltdowns count as a TT? I don't know why the semantics matter to me. Maybe I'm just trying to prepare myself for something to come, the day when Ben finally has an actual temper tantrum in a horribly public, inconvenient place.

Cute Ben Things:

My parents are stealing Ben away from us Sunday morning to take him to Oshkosh for the day. My niece had a birthday, and she's having a party at the YMCA. And we were all invited. I declined, stating health reasons, but then my sister suggested that Ben come anyway. I bet he'll have a lot of fun playing in the water with all of his cousins, but geez. I'm going to miss the little tyke. This will be his first time in the water since he was six months old, which barely counts.

Ben does this new "spinning" thing. I think it goes in conjunction with a song they sing at daycare, but he does it silently at home. He'll raise his arms out to the side or up high, and he'll spin slowly in circles with this silly, sly smile on his face.

Clapping. We watched American Idol on Tuesday, and Ben was still awake and playing for the first half. He would stand there, enrapt by the singing, and then clap when he saw the audience clapping. It was so precious how he would clap and then look over at us with a smile of achievement.

He still panics a little bit when I go into the bathroom and close the door. After the Trauma That Was Sunday, he's come to associate mommy being in the bathroom alone with mommy feeling sick, and consequently, no more playing with mommy. He's had a few meltdowns this week because of it. When I leave the bathroom, he's usually waiting or comes running with arms outstretched for a hug. Seriously. How cute is that.