Tantrum Season

I had a hard week. I understand that it's all relative; for instance, nobody tried to blow me or my stuff up. My health has been okay, though I do feel like my sinuses have been lined with cement.

But I have had trouble getting along with Jarrah in the past five days. I think she may be teething; in fact, it's possible she has 32 teeth coming in simultaneously from the way she's been behaving. She spends most of her time either screaming, stamping her feet (in that kind of "I don't wanna and you can't make me!" way) or letting her mouth go slack when it's filled with barely moistened food so that clumps of viscous gloop roll down her shirt and onto the furniture and car seat. Often these episodes seem sooooo irrational that I am stunned, like tonight when we gave her two slices of peach (she loves peach) and she nibbled one and put it down, then reached for a third "fresh" slice from the bowl. When I pointed and said "You already have two" she began screaming and frantically whisking all her dinner onto the floor.

Yesterday we visited Mary, Paul and Joy at "My Gym" and Jarrah's tiny fingers had just touched the rail to the ball pit when the staff told me she couldn't come in "until the music starts." Well, try explaining that to her. She yelled, cried, snotted and stamped her feet in the otherwise silent lobby while being watched with vague interest by three or four other perfectly quiet children who did not feel the same urgency about the balls.

These episodes have been raising my blood pressure. I hear my heart pounding higher and higher until I think I am choking on it. I repeat like a mantra "Just be patient, she's only one; just be patient; she's only one" and that does work until suddenly it doesn't and a tsunami of rage rolls over my head and I have to stride away from the eye of the storm. David is more understanding. He explains to me that irrational is rational to someone of her age. I believe him, but he is gone all day in a nice, quiet office. Somehow I'm just not doing a very good job of being patient and understanding right now.

And it hurts me, that I feel that way. I want to dig deeper and find a bottomless well of compassion and calm, but I don't seem to be able to. And then I feel inadequate. After all, I remember reading somewhere recently this quote from a toddler father: "I don't worry about my daughter loving me. That's not her job; it's my job to love her." I adore that idea, I really do. And I aspire to that kind of...what? selflessness? Maybe it isn't selflessness when you get everything you need from the ACT of loving your child. Right now loving my child is just making me haggard.

I think what really makes me haggard is knowing it doesn't go away. There will be some version of her stamping her feet and screaming now for the foreseeable future and beyond. And I hope I get better at dealing with it so I don't have some kind of cardiac episode.

Also it's very hard to have these feelings without the soothing balm of chocolate. I'm just saying.