Tonight Ava told me that she wanted Carter to go back in my tummy.
Just as I was allowing myself a bit of confidence that I had bridged the worst of the jealousy meanies with relatively few casualties, she pulls this one out of her bag of tricks. Ouch. Sooooo, we had a little talk about how great it is (more like will be) to have a brother, and she slowly recovered. It helped that he played a raucous game of peekaboo as we did this, cracking himself, Ava, and myself up.
This happened because I had asked her to share a toy, and when she would not (even though he had it first), I took it away. Not a brilliant tactic in the minutes before bedtime, but I had warned her before that this would happen. Oh, she was ticked. And in the middle of her tantrum she asked that Carter be returned.
And I thought that we would be tantrum free this evening. SIlly me. But at least I did not get the usual diaper revolt. This was such a tough one--she really did not want her night-time diaper on. She is diaper-free during the day, and the notion of having to put one on at night was devastating to her. And I mean devastating. That kind of crying-so-hard-I-can't-make-a-sound-and-am-going-blue-in-the-lips-but-just-you-wait-because-the-scream-that-finally-gets-out-is-going-to-be-do-loud-the-dog-is-going-to-howl devastation. And she would then scream "NO MOMMY! NO! PLEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAASE DON"T PUT MY DIAPER ON!!!!!!!!!!!!" And I would be left traumatized over whether or not I was traumatizing her, and somehow ruining all of my potty training efforts (her efforts, really), and what was going to happen--should I left her wet the bed--dear god, no--ok, diaper on, and then 5 minutes later, she would be asleep. And, how did I solve this, you ask? Simple. Dora the Explorer pull-ups. (I have to note that I first wrote that as Dora the Explored. Glad I caught that typo.) Apparently, pull-ups are not the same as diapers. They do not have tabs, and thus are closer on the spectrum to underwear, and are therefore ok to put on. In fact, so ok to put on that the following morning, she told me that she wanted to put on a new one for the daytime. After a moment of almost giving up in defeat, I said "nope--night-time only". And we are free of the diaper disaster.
But not out of the woods entirely, obviously. Her issue this evening might also be due to the fact that we were cooped up yesterday all day without any power. The wind was CRAZY and blowing at 50 mph, and as it usually does, the power went out. And the temperature was dropping pretty fast. So, Mom made a fire, and we all stayed within a 15 foot radius of it, and played inside in the dark ALL DAY LONG. Fun, to an extent. I am not a fan of trying to go out and get a load of wood in 50 mph winds and sub-zero temperatures. Three times. I contemplated telling Ava to call 911 if a tree branch fell on me, but reason got the better of me. First, we had no power, and thus no phone. Duh. Second, that would just be far too much of a temptation along the lines of "I wonder what would happen if..."
