As the boys have grown, their understanding, their emotions, and their reactions have intensified!
Brokenhearted:
On a particularly bad day, as I was throwing out ultimatums like candy in a parade, and nobody was listening to me what-so-evah, and after Logan continued to *touch* the bedroom window screen insisting, "But I'm not PUSHING on it, Mom. It's not PUSHING" (*touch, touch, touch*) - I hollered "That's it!" and then I put myself in Mommy time-out in the bathroom.
I took my time washing my face, putting make-up on and fixing my hair. All the while, Austin and Logan banged on the door screaming and yelling and crying. I didn't really listen to their actual words, it just seemed like a lot of repeating: "No, Mommy! Let me in. I promise to listen. Mommeeeeeee!"
When I finally opened the door, Logan was pretty quick to recover. But Austin had big ole' crocodile tears and was just heart broken. It took him forever to spill out his heartache, "Buttttttt, Mommyyyyyyy, you forgottttttt. You forgot meeeeeeeeeeeeee."
"I forgot you, baby? Honey, Mommy just took a time-out, that's all."
"Noooooo, you forgot meeeeeeeeeeeee. I WAS listeningggggggg, (sniff-sniff, wails again at the thought of the perceived injustice), I didn't.....I didn't...I wasn'tttttttt....touching the windowwwww (bawls and bawls and buries his head in my shoulder). You were...were...were supposed to take me WITH you, Mommy!"
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I'll fight for my brother :
Austin is certainly more laid-back than Logan. And in the area of potty training, Austin tends to have some, er, lapses that I think are just the result of really not bothering to take the time to pee on the potty. When these lapses occur, it's takes me about a week or two of positive reinforcements, dangling the carrot, taking away privileges, etc, to find anything that might matter enough to him to start, well, taking the time to put his pee-pee on the potty again.
We have annual passes to an amusement park (Busch Gardens) and last week when I picked the boys up from Preschool on Friday - I told them we were gonna go home and pack lunch and head there. As the park boasts a big ole' Elmo-land, they were obviously ecstatic about this venture. However, upon arriving home and going to unbuckle Austin (who 5 minutes ago at school was dry), I was a little surprised and a lot aggravated to find a little "accident." I declared, "No Busch Gardens for you. You have to be able to wear underwear to Busch Gardens." Austin seemed to think about crying, kinda gave a little shrug and continued to contemplate whether or not this newsflash bothered him at all.
But Logan, milli-seconds after my announcement, fell out on me. He completely lost it. He stood in front of his brother, arms spread out (in full-on protection mode) and could barely contain himself enough to speak, "Noooooooooo, Mommy. Austin comes!! He's a big boy. Right, Austin? Right?" He turns to Austin, "You can do it Austin, tell her, TELL HER!"
As I'm walking into the house, Logan has attached himself to my leg and is trying to drag me back in time to before this disaster struck. All the while wailing to know end. Truth be told, I have actually never seen Logan react this way before. Austin had eventually decided it was in his best interest if he started carrying on as well. But he kept pausing to look over at Logan and then up at me, sort of as if to see if he had missed something, like, maybe: "We are going into the house and inflict ancient and severe torture methods on Austin."
My chants bounced between, "No Austin. You are not going. No more pee-pee'ing in your pants." and "Logan, honey - you can go. You can stop crying."
Logan eventually let go of my leg, grabbed ahold of Austin, dragged him into the bathroom and in between hyperventilating wails, begged and pleaded for Austin to pee in the potty as if his life depended on this. This goes on for the full 5 minutes as I'm unloading the car.
I hear pee on the potty. Logan comes out, still a complete emotional mess and manages to spill out some sentence like, "Mum, Mum. He pee'd. He did it. Can he pleasssssssssssssssse go to Busch Gardens now?" *snif, snif*
Austin comes out still sporting some sort of I'm crying, but not really sure what's going on look.
After several minutes of discussion with Austin going over all the potty rules again, eliciting several promises from him, and with one final warning that if he does pee-pee in his pants at Busch Gardens we will immediately leave the park, I declare, that "Yes, Austin can go to Busch Gardens."
Austin runs upstairs to change his clothes.
Logan collapses into a heap on the floor. Head buried under his arms. Emotionally exhausted.
We don't look like we woke up at 4am!
