Assault on the ears

There have been no further biting incidents in our household, thank god, but the boy was, frankly, a royal pain in the ass all weekend. He felt kind of hot and he seemed even droolier than normal, so I assumed his cantankerous behavior was due to yet another (!) tooth coming in. To validate my suspicions, I actually pinned him on his back during one tantrum (figuring hey, he's already pissed off) and aimed a flashlight down his angry little scream-hole, peering around for the culprit—surely a massive, serrated tusk was painfully erupting from the roof of his mouth—but I couldn't tell what I was looking at. Were those irritated gums? How long had that tooth been there? Was that . . . a forked tongue? Retreat! Retreat!

I realize that at 21 months, Riley has many, many more tantrums in his future, but I find myself feeling officially Tired of All the Crying. Must there always be so much crying? Milk not delivered in .000372 seconds? CRY. A toy briefly stuck under the couch? SCREAM. Air filled with molecules? TEARS.

Second only to a cat throwing up at 3:30 AM, tantrumy crying is the most annoying noise in the universe. From the whining "Eh-heh. Eh-heh. Eh-heh. Heehhhhhhh . . ." sounds to the full-fledged glass-shattering arias, one small child can produce more aural pollution than a Boeing 747. I was thinking, I've been exposed to crying on a daily basis for nearly two years now. I somehow missed the chapter of What to Expect When You're Expecting that told me I was going to experience the equivalent of listening to someone scrape their fingernails down a blackboard/eech a fork across styrofoam/hork up a hairball EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Comments

[Jacqueline]

Redo your math, my dear. :) Your son is not 19 months old! He is the same age (and at the same stage!) as my 21 month old. :-D

[Linda S.]

GOD. I will never get his age straight on this blog. Thanks for pointing that out, will fix (although it's technically 20 months until the 31st, right? Since he was born Aug 31? Argh, this is officially the last time I'm counting months EVER).

[Christina]

Tantrum crying is second only to the old "middle of the night" crying in my book - OH how I dread that... after nursing for 20 months I was ready to cry. Don't get me wrong, I loved nursing and I love my son but OMG no wonder I am not ready for another tyke. I need some peace, relatively speaking of course! I feel your pain! The crying does subside once they can talk more - my son is now 2 and his language skills took over recently so we do not have near the incidence of crying that we once did. Oh and summer helps - we spend ALMOST ALL our time outdoors because he hardly seems to cry out there.

[Joanne]

Yes, at the end of May he'll be 21 months old. I like to count backwards - like if he's 24 months at the end of August, 23 at the end of July, 22 at the end of June, etc., etc. My boy will be two next month and I can't wait! I'm just going to say TWO until December and then I'm going to say 2.5. And that's it!

But I wanted to say WORD about the crying. One thing that helped me was in my sleep book (that I never stop talking about or referring to), he says "birds fly, babies cry", because it's all they can do. They just can't say the words they want to (and really what good is eat ball mama going to do them when they're mad about something else entirely?) so they yell and yell and cry and cry. Damn them. :)

[Danell]

I swear to god (or whatever), there is not a book out there that can do what your blog does for me...every time I'm starting to feel like I must not be cut out for this mommying thing because WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING WRONG WHY DOES MY KID WHINE ALL THE TIME I'M SECRETLY THINKING OF PITCHING HIM OUT THE NEAREST WINDOW, I log on and voila! You've written about it and your readers have followed up with reassuring comments and just like that I feel okay about myself and my kid again. And also, I like really long, rambling run-on sentences. Maybe I can spell some shit wrong next time, too.

[Cara]

Why, just now as I was reading this my 20 mo. old son was pitching a wall-eyed fit because I entered the lock code on the microwave and OMG, he can no longer get it to turn on! I wish ALL appliances had lock codes!

Oh, and thank god we're done with the teeth but let me assure you that those pointy little canines that seem like they should come in with a quickness on account of their sharpness? Yeah, not so much. Those things took forever and made for one total crabcake!

[laughing mommy]

I had a baby teething this weekend too.

I'm sick of the crying too.

The is the sad part. I'd take my 17 month old crying ALL DAY LONG over listening to my 4 year old cry and whine and carry on. I thought it would be smooth sailing after the "terrible twos"... but no. Four is killing me.

[Swistle]

I have one who is 23 months old and likes to cry at the "fussy, pre-tantrum" level THE ENTIRE TIME WE ARE IN A STORE. Little bratty noises all the way up to actual crying, randomly selected. I think she figured out that mixing it up would drive me EVEN CRAZIER.

[Amanda]

I never used to know why people complained about their kids being loud because my firstborn really never screamed much. My daughter, though? There could not be a child in the universe louder than her.

I was all excited today about turning her carseat around because she's turning one on Wednesday. It never occurred to me until I did it that that meant I would have to be DIRECTLY assaulted by her screams while I drive. I may seriously have to buy some ear plugs.

[cherubmarie]

I'm with ya...
I've already yelled at them both (4yo & 2 yo) and said in public, "Drop the crying and get over it already!" Yes. I'm evil. I know it. They say knowing is half the battle. :)

[Kathy/ Lessons from the Laundry]

My number two cried, was cranky and a general pain for a couple months when he was around your son's age. One morning, when locking myself outside the house was starting to feel like the right thing to do, I spiked his juice with Motrin. It worked. I spiked it the next morning. It worked. Now I'm not a big proponent of drugs, I haven't taken motrin in a couple of years cause I'm sort of crunchy that way, but that child got Motrin in his juice for a couple months straight. They say the teeth hurt even if you can't see them, so I bought that theory and everyone was happier. Good luck with the crankiness.

[NM]

Hey, are you sure you did not sneak into my house and write about my 22 month old? This sounds exactly like the weekend I have had. These are the days I am hit by the "TGIM" (Thank God its Monday) syndrome.

[Matt]

I have a 21 month old demon living in my house. 5 AM wake up screaming, tantrums and annoying, incessant whining. Who stole my good little boy and replaced him with the devil?

[MRW]

OK, I know this is going to sound weird, but I think of this as a really good developmental stage - not for him, for you. At least for me when my son was a baby and would cry, I'd worry something was wrong and fuss around trying to make it all better. The incessant tantruming was nature's way of ensuring I didn't become a hovering mom who rushed in to fix every problem (real or not). Instead, I got really fed up with the tantruming and stopped worrying my son was actually hurt or upset or frustrated unless I knew something else was going on. He had to start using his words and figuring some things out for himself. This is a really good thing because now that he's four, I'm about ready to jump out the window with whining, but I'm already mentally toughened from the tantruming, so I can say over and over and OVER "I can't understand you when you whine, please use your regular voice." Or if I'm on the edge of insanity "stop whining right now." Like the teen years, all of this is nature's way of helping you not to completely freak out and go to pieces when your kids go to college ;-)

[Amy Neto]

Oh yes...I was wishing just yesterday that I had a sound proof room that I could lock them in when they start whining/crying/being generally obnoxious. And then, my 5 year old tells me last night that he's old enough to wash the dishes and I should go sit down and watch my favorite show while he did them. Instead we did them together and I almost felt bad about wishing him into seclusion just moments before. It's a wild ride, but isn't it great!

[Missie]

It's a good thing all my neighbors that we are a fairly normal, non-child-abusing family, because the way my daughter screams? You would swear we were tearing out her fingernails one by one. My neighbor ACROSS THE STREET told me she could hear my daughter in her back yard! Now that is just wrong.

I say we put Riley, my Alison, and all the other toddlers mentioned here in a sound proof room and let them scream at each other. Meanwhile, we will have lattes and eat chocolate and keep an eye on them from the viewing area.

[Amie]

My son is only a month older than yours and right now Tantrum is his middle name. And not just small tantrums. Everything requires a large, wall shaking, window shattering wail. You aren't alone, and I don't think there's anything wrong with Riley. He's just going through a normal stage in toddler development.

[Ali]

ohhhh just wait until those lovely teen years.. You haven't seen a tantrum until you have a 17 yr old wanting to go out for the evening when she hasn't 1)done her chores 2) spoke civil to a person in DAYS 3) is grounded for talking on the phone at 1 am (she was sooo busted!) and yea the grounding just did it.

Not only are they more creative in the language department, they are bigger and can make bigger messes too!

;o)

[Laura H]

I second Ali! And add in an 8 year age gap between two kids that are constantly (it never ends) whining in my ear that they are hungry, they need socks, why can't they go around the block (because I'm a paranoid mommy of an 8 year old), when am I going to sign her up for the road test...and on and on...when all I'm trying to do is read your blogs.

[Melanie]

It gets better. The more words they have, the better it gets. Right now, the frustration is just awful because he doesn't have the ability to speak as easily as an adult (or even a four year old). Also, he's probably the spawn of Satan. I'm definitely not discounting that fact (since mine is too). But once your spawn there starts speaking more, you can discuss WORDS and how we USE OUR WORDS and it works really, really well. If you don't sacrifice him before then.

[JoAnn]

My daughter is 22 months old and for the past 3 weeks has been getting worse and worse with her tantrums and screaming and whining. It seems like it is ALL DAY LONG- except of course once my husband gets home when she starts acting like an angel and he can't understand why I'm so tired. Honestly, I have been doing a lot of crying myself. I'm 6 months pregnant and every hormone in my body is going haywire and I feel like a horrible mother because my child is NEVER happy. Am I doing something wrong?