From the Parenting Trenches: Buckle Up - It's Rami's Tantrum Hour.

It all started innocently enough.

Rami found a neglected canister of play-dough languishing in our back yard.

Did you know that, when exposed to extreme heat and back-to-back thunderstorms for a couple of weeks, play-dough pales in color and turns to the consistency of home caulking material?



Neither did I.

Rami was fascinated at first...then annoyed....


but then decided to mourn his melted play-substance.

This took the form of a slow, whining cry.  I could tell that things would escalate quickly when Rami, himself dissolving into an inconsolable mess, snotted all over my shoulder and smeared the blue goop through the fistful of hair just above my right ear.  

"Okay, everybody inside!" I chirped in my best 'Enthusiastic Ima' impression.  I shuttled the pouting children into the downstairs bathtub (for which I was at that moment uttering prayers of gratitude.) Rami kicked the sniffly-screams up a notch because, despite how upset he was about the pale blue gooeyness covering his hands and now his feet (seriously?  how???), apparently the prospect of washing it off was even more upsetting.

As I squeaked the cold-water faucet on, a frigid blast came shooting out of the shower head and doused Rami.  (David hadn't turned the shower-faucet off before the water-faucet.  Thanks, honey!)  All hell broke loose.  A gasping and sputtering Rami keened the injustice being heaped upon him and demanded hugs, which I administered.  He hadn't counted on being returned to the bathtub, though, and so the real tantrum started when I returned him to the water for an actual washing (O, the humanity!)

Rami, eyes crazed and drool pouring from his mouth, seized my Venus razor and held it to his throat.  Unmoved, I doused his goopy hair with water.  As I sloshed a handful of shampoo over his head, he slung the razor at his brother's face.  His screams now began to border on ear-splitting.

Following a desperate performance of The Fastest Bath Ever, I trudged up the stairs with a screaming baby tucked under each arm and managed to open the safety gate with my pinky finger, thankyouverymuch. (Asher, the dear child, quickly figured out what was best for him, and had been obeying my every command without whine or protest since the shower-malfunction incident.)


I  set Rami down in order to piece together some semblance of dinner, to which he responded by hurling his 23-pound body an impressive distance across the living room floor.  I seized the opportunity afforded me and used my free hand to sling a frozen waffle into the toaster oven and a pan on the stove for scrambled eggs.  After processing my frigid lack of pity, he decided the best way to punish me would be to attach himself to my body until he got What He Wanted (an elusive and shifting thing, yet to be identified.)


(observe the broken blood vessels in the eyes)

I shuffled through the steps of assembling breakfast-for-dinner like a father penguin balancing an egg between his toes.  (But instead of a sweet penguin chick, remember, there was a red, hollering, leaking 20-month-old clinging to my yoga pants.)  I plopped syrup onto waffles (homemade and whole wheat! parenting points for me!) and nudged scrambled eggs onto tray and plate.  

Hoisting the blubbering Rami into his high chair, the din almost instantaneously subsided.






It seemed that dinner was What He Wanted. 


I took a deep breath.  Nesi paused her eating momentarily to look up at me and flash a grin.  My goodness, but these children are sweet.  What were we so upset about, again? 

I sat down at the table, ran a hand through disheveled hair, felt something wet and gross.  Oh, that's right - the blue goop.
 

About 20 minutes later Abba arrives home, to adoration and accolade.  I am grateful for his presence, and for the now-quiet children.  Most of all I am grateful for the moment I then get to steal away to a steaming shower, and the sight of the blue goop streaming away from my hair and down the drain.