Our soon-to-be 3 year old, Ivy, was not in a great mood last night. When I was putting the girls to bed she did the usual 2 year old thing of crying and getting upset about me doing what she asked me to do. She wasn’t happy with any of the choices I gave her. Nothing was right. She didn’t want the pillows there. I didn’t set them up right. Her water bottle didn’t go there. I couldn’t even decipher most of the requests. But in the end, Ivy and Emma went to sleep really fast and no one besides Ivy got upset.
It was a pretty big deal for me. I didn’t lose my cool. I didn’t threaten. I just gave them choices. It was going much better than what I wrote about in this post. And they did good, even though there was some crying and yelling (mostly directed at me).
Then, we only got woken up one time last night (by the baby). This was also a big deal, since we’ve been woken up probably four times a night for the past several nights.
I woke up on my own this morning. No one was crying. It was awesome.
I was in a great mood. I thought everyone else would be too.
I was wrong, of course.
Ivy was still not in a great mood. I went to say good morning and tell her that I was proud of her for going right to sleep and she yelled “No Mommy! Don’t talk to me!”
It really hurt my feelings and I just don’t know what to say to that. But at breakfast she was calmer and we gave each other bites of our oatmeal.
Some time after breakfast she went in the bathroom and started playing in the water with some cups. We let her play by herself because of course we have a lot of other things to do in the morning. I checked on her once. I may have plugged the sink then because I thought if the sink was full she wouldn’t keep running the water.
I left her in there playing with the plugged up sink while finishing getting myself ready and also watching the baby and Emma. When I thought we were pretty close to being ready I told the girls we were going to leave in 5 minutes.
I went into the bathroom and both taps were on all the way and water was pouring over the edge of the top of the sink onto the floor!
I yelled, “Ivy no!” and grabbed her and set her outside the door. As soon as I set her in the other room, water started flowing out of the bathroom onto the floor of that room too.
I called for my husband and he threw me a towel, then went to get more. I don’t even know if I turned the water off. I was so surprised and upset I can’t even remember clearly what happened.
We were just about to head out the door. How did this happen?
My husband did most of the cleanup while I tried to explain to Ivy that this was not ok and she needed to help clean it up.
Once that was done I had to put a new shirt on Ivy because of course her sleeves were sopping wet. I swear she told me she wanted the one I showed her, but when I put it on she started yelling and crying about it. “I don’t want this one! It’s too tight! I don’t want this one!”
I told her why she had to put it on and that she couldn’t wear her other one because it was wet. She didn’t care. She just kept saying “I don’t want this one!”
She didn’t want to put on her socks and shoes either, and of course she didn’t want the ones I chose. But again, she flooded the bathroom instead of getting ready, so I got to choose her shoes. She didn’t want to wear her jacket either, but I am fine with just bringing that in the car.
So I just carried that, along with all of my other stuff, out to the car with me.
Because yes, we did eventually make it out the door. The crazy thing is it wasn’t even that late. I could have sworn we were leaving the house at 7:10. Which is, in fact, 5 minutes after I said we were going to leave in 5 minutes (and also a lot earlier than we sometimes leave the house). We just didn’t think those 5 minutes would be spent mopping up the bathroom.
Poor Ivy said on the way to daycare “I’m not in a good mood.” Well, at that moment I wasn’t in a great mood earlier. But it’s amazing what a good night’s sleep can do. Because I’m not even upset about it. It was a flurry of activity that I could have done without this morning, but in the end it’s just water.
This is one of those things that I might inadvertently talk about all day at work because it somehow seems like a big thing. Instead, I wanted to tell you.
Hopefully this hasn’t happened to you, but I know you can relate. Let us know in the comments what your worst morning disaster was so we can sympathize (or be happy ours wasn’t that bad?).
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