An Evening at the Summers House

As dinner time approached last night, I got the kids occupied in the living room with an episode of SuperWHY. (Cue Mommy guilt that I’m using TV as a babysitter and not involving my kids in the cooking process. But Zac refused to go into his bouncy chair in the kitchen – that child has amazing trunk strength and can nearly flip himself upside down when I’m holding him to avoid being set down where he doesn’t want to be!)

I cooked a shrimp stir fry for Darrel and Jed and Hamburger Hash for me. Most of the way through with cooking, Darrel came home from work. The kids were super excited to see daddy and now Jed was in the kitchen helping while Darrel held Zac and observed.

Jed pulled the bouncy chair over to the stove and started saying “Yummy! Jed eat one fish?!” Meaning shrimp.

At that point, though, the shrimp were still hard as a rock, straight from the freezer. So I told him “No, baby. You won’t like these shrimp because they’re too hard and cold.”

Begin tantrum #1. Jed threw himself on the floor face first and wailed…”Jed eat fish!!”

Sigh…

I looked at Darrel and told him that Jed had actually been REALLY good all day, and this was the first behavior like this I had seen.

Cooking continued. After a few minutes of fit pitching on the floor, Jed decided to try again. He climbed back on the bouncy chair (using it as a step stool, not a chair) right in front of the stove (blocking my access to everything) and repeated: “Jed eat one fish?”

I again told him these SHRIMP were not warm enough to eat yet…but he could help me with the noodles while we waited!

That worked to distract him! Well, for a couple minutes, anyway.  Then it was “Jed eat one fish?”…again.

That kept up until finally I figured the shrimp were heated through enough. So I picked one out of the pan and held it out to Jed. “Blow on it, baby; it’s hot!” I cautioned him.

He gave an obligatory blow or two then shoved that shrimp into his mouth! Making “mmm” noises the whole time he ate, I used the time to do some stirring and flipping on the stove.

From behind me came a little voice: “Jed eat two fish, Mommy!”

Geez! He’d barely swallowed the first shrimp I let him snitch from the stove and he already wanted another! I told him “No, baby, you need to wait for dinner.”

Cue tantrum #2. Face down on the floor, wailing like he was being tortured.

A few minutes later dinner was ready. I chopped up some tomatos to drop on top of the fake-scampi dish because Jed has been VERY into tomatos the last few days.

Some meals, all he ate was the tomatos that we diced and put on top!

As I finished chopping tomatos, I grabbed plates. Jed yelled out “Daddy come! Dinner ready!”, which was so cute and precious it almost made up for the tantrums.

Jed told me he wanted to eat off his Thomas plate, so I dished up some pasta onto it, dished up Darrel’s plate, then grabbed tomatos and dropped them on both plates.

Cue tantrum #3. “NO TATOS (tomatos) ON JED PLATE!!!”

Seriously, kiddo? Darrel came to see what the latest fit pitching was about and had the same exact thought as me. “Wow, Mommy – the audacity of giving him what he’s been begging for for days. How dare you?!”

“I know,” I said. To Jed: “Go to the table, Jed. You can pick off the tomatos and not eat them.”  (Increase crying at that news.)

I just stepped around him and took the plates to the dinner table, and when everything was finally where it needed to be and Jed was still laying face down on the kitchen floor wailing I said “Jed, do you want me to help you pick off the tomatos?”

INSTANT SILENCE – BIG SMILE “yes, mommy!” And he jumped up and ran to the table.

Are you kidding me??

Sigh…

So we all sat down to dinner. I helped picked tomatos off Jed’s plate, and he started eating.

Zac decided that was his moment to shine. He started wiggle worming in Darrel’s arms, so I commented that he must be hungry.

I tried to nurse him while I was eating, but oh, no! Zac WAS hungry, but he didn’t want milk – he wanted OUR food!

Since none of our food has yet been deemed safe for him, he can’t have any of it.

A few more attempts at nursing that failed and I tried to put him in the bouncy chair. Again, he contorted his body and screamed bloody murder about that idea. So we put him down in the living room. (cue mommy feeling like crap because she has to exclude her baby from dinner thanks to FPIES and his insatiable desire to put everything in his mouth; it makes it dangerous to let him walk around the dining room or porch when we are eating. So we get to enjoy the sounds of Zac – understandably – wailing the whole time we eat because he’s been physically banished from the family. I hate FPIES.)

About that time Jed decided that he wanted to play while he ate…with a bungee cord and a vacuum cleaner extension tube.

No good can come from that at the dinner table, so Darrel took it away from him.

Cue tantrum #4.

Ah…dinner time with two small children. Nothing like the sound of SCREAMS to make dining a more pleasant, enjoyable experience!!

Finally Jed decided to eat some more, and he scarfed down the rest of his shrimp and then left the table to run around. After telling him to sit down (because he hadn’t been excused – believe it or not we ARE working on manners!) he proceeded to throw himself down on his chair, wailing.

Tantrum #5.

Zac was still screaming from the living room.

Jed finished his tantrum, got up, and closed the door to the house so he wouldn’t have to hear Zac screaming any more! Then he tried to play and again, we reminded him that he needed to come sit down.

Cue tantrum #6.

This was also when I realized that I KNEW why Jed was tantruming like this! At the health food store earlier, they had small samples of chicken cooked in their special spice rubs. Jed, of course, wanted a sample. I read the ingredients, saw that it contained garlic powder, but decided it would be okay because the chicken pieces were so small, and the quantity of garlic powder would be incredibly minimal. Um, nope! Apparently the smallest exposure of garlic sends Jed’s Fructose Malabsorption into overload – he went from angel child to out of control child within 3 hours of the chicken ingestion. WOW!

Finally I told him that if he got up from the table again, we would take his plate away and he would not be given any more food for the rest of the night.

A few minutes later he got up; we took away his plate and his big complaint? “Daddy no eat Jed’s Thomas plate!”

Well, dinner was over, so it was time for showers and bed.

Both kids went into the shower, and I got Zac out to dry off and dress for bed. Jed wanted to play in the shower a little longer, so I was already nursing Zac when he got out. Darrel took Jed to the living room to dress him for bed, so I started nursing Zac at 8:00 p.m. and finished at about 8:50 p.m.

I went out to join the boys in the living room (Jed took a late nap so we knew he wouldn’t go to bed at 8:00 like normal and were letting him burn off energy in the living room) and watched a whopping 5 minutes of TV before – Zac woke up crying!

We got kisses from Jed, then I laid down to nurse Zac again while Darrel tried to put Jed to sleep. Only, Jed didn’t want to go to bed in HIS bed. He wanted to go to bed in “Mommy, Daddy, Zac bed!”

So we let him climb up next to us; all 4 of us were in bed at 9:00 p.m. together. Ah…I love when the whole family is snuggling in bed!

I fell asleep nursing Zac this second time around. Apparently Jed started talking and counting out loud, so Darrel took him to his room. At 10:00 p.m. Darrel came and woke me up (he knew I needed to get some things done before flying to work today) and I was up for a whole 5 minutes before Jed came peeking around the corner. He still wasn’t asleep! And now, he wanted Mommy to put him to bed.

So, into Jed’s room I went, kissing Darrel good-night as I went. We snuggled in the bed and I FINALLY got him to lay still. Sure enough, I fell asleep.

About 11:30 p.m. I woke up, carefully climbed out of Jed’s toddler bed (yes, I managed to fall asleep on a toddler bed. Who’s tired?) and went to work in the kitchen.

Ten minutes later, Zac woke up to nurse again.

So, back to the bedroom, lay down to nurse Zac, and I zonked out immediately.

Then I slept until 4:00 a.m., when I woke up from nightmares. Since I hadn’t gotten anything done the night before, I just decided to be up for the day and get my work done. Ugh.

Sadly, this is an extreme example, but still is a far too normal a night in our house.

Isn’t sleep deprivation a form of torture?

This is why parents of teenagers embarrass their kids; it’s payback for the first 5 years of life!

How do your evenings go? Please say we’re not the only ones with kids that tantrum and fight sleep like this!