Gestational logorrhea: week 9

I was such a baby, the first time around. The slightest aversions turned into insurmountable obstacles. Having to wash lettuce for a salad filled me with almost uncontrollable rage, even though I most definitely wanted to eat salad. The slightest feelings of nausea became near-misses. Brushing teeth was a twice-daily exercise in dry-heaving. (I know I'm lucky that's all it ever was.) I indulged my insatiable craving for pizza as though it were a religious duty, and gained much more weight than was really necessary.

This time? I think I'm just turning mean. See, I've got a two-and-a-half year old on my hands most of the day, which is to say: a ticking time bomb. I'm lucky that his fuse is quite long, longer than other kids his age, and he has prodigious vocabulary with which to express himself. This has spared me many meltdowns. But despite looking and speaking like a child beyond his years, he doesn't have a lot of horse sense. Yesterday he bolted away from me as we walked home from the playground. I couldn't believe he wasn't going to stop, so I let him get quite far away, most of a block, and then had to huff and puff my way to him. I'm lucky he didn't make it to the street. I was blind with rage when I finally scooped him up (using improper lifting position, which yielded a backache I probably deserved), got him in the stroller, and yelled in his face, which never works because he knows when he's going to be yelled at, and preemptively yells, himself. There was no "teachable moment" there, just a hormonal mom yelling at a yelling kid who wasn't going to get the point. I wish that was the only low point of yesterday, but there was more - we went to a restaurant for lunch, he was extremely sleepy and refused even a bite of food, and I only felt irrational anger about his lunch strike. He was out cold by the time we got home, and finally ate his lunch at 3 pm. But that doesn't excuse how mean I was to him.

Kids being the resilient little buggers that they are, there are no hard feelings on his part, today. I do wonder if deep inside he's starting to be afraid of me and my anger, which might be hormonally triggered but which I come by honestly via genes, thanks to a quick to anger dad (who, I learned recently, counts breaking our Pong video game by kicking it to pieces, because we wouldn't stop playing when he asked us to, as one of his finer parenting moments). A cautionary tale for you, ahhhhh.