Tragic Sandwich

Tag: meltdown

  • Anatomy of a Birthday Weekend

    Or, What We Did On Our Birthday Vacation

    Thursday (our birthday weekends start early, by necessity)

    • Tour a school that we might want Baguette to attend next year.
    • Decide that we do not want Baguette to attend that school (it seems like a very good school–just not what we want for her).
    • Clean the house.
    • Clean the patio and back yard.
    • Go to speech therapy and music therapy.
    • Go to Costco and buy food and birthday cake.
    • Clean the house.
    • Make items for party games.

    Friday

    • Clean the house.
    • Clean the back yard.
    • Do some work that needs to be done even if I am on vacation.
    • Clean the house.
    • Clean the back yard.
    • Clean the patio.
    • Welcome grandparents and great-aunt, who are visiting from out of town.
    • Go out to dinner.
    • Clean the house.
    • Make party favors.

    Saturday

    • Make party favors.
    • Clean the house.
    • Clean the patio.
    • Make signs for food.
    • Clean the house.
    • Clean the patio.
    • Locate the Happy Birthday banner we bought two years ago.
    • Put up the Happy Birthday banner.
    • Locate more tape for the Happy Birthday banner.
    • Make the salad.
    • Put the Happy Birthday banner back up.
    • Welcome guests. Realize again that we have invited a really large number of people.
    • Abandon hope of keeping the Happy Birthday banner up.
    • Make sure parents and children are enjoying themselves.
    • Call the pizza parlor and confirm that the pizza is actually going to be delivered.
    • Make sure that Baguette has the chance to find some quiet time.
    • Put out the pizza, salad, and signs for the food.
    • Realize that I have left another parent supervising Baguette in the front yard for far longer than is reasonable.
    • Ask Baguette if she wants pizza. (“No thank you.”)
    • Ask Baguette if she wants macaroni and cheese. (“Yes.”)
    • Bring a chair we took outside for the party back inside, because Baguette wants to eat at the table in the breakfast nook like she always does, not at the table on the patio where her friends are.
    • Make sure everyone gets food.
    • Eat one slice of pizza and some salad.
    • Realize that, in spite of all the cleaning, the living room still contains a case of baby wipes and a 3-pack of contact lens solution.
    • Decide not to care.
    • Bring out the cake and put candles on it.
    • Try to light the candles.
    • Try to light the candles.
    • Try to light the candles.
    • Try to light one candle, which is the most that we may be able to keep lit with the breeze.
    • Abandon hope of lighting the candles.
    • Serve the cake.
    • Encourage Baguette to say “thank you for coming to my party” to as many children as possible.
    • Say goodbye to everyone.
    • Try to get Baguette to nap.
    • Abandon hope of getting Baguette to nap.
    • Regroup with grandparents and great-aunt when they come back from their hotels for dinner.
    • Order Chinese food.
    • Eat Chinese food (adults) and macaroni and cheese (Baguette).
    • Open presents from grandparents and great-aunt.
    • Accept that the most enticing part of presents is the paper, which tears interestingly and can be draped as a fetching hat.
    • Say goodnight to grandparents and great-aunt.

    Sunday

    • Have morning meltdown (Baguette, with collateral damage to Mr. Sandwich’s hearing).
    • Regroup with grandparents and great-aunt.
    • Caravan to 7-11 for coffee.
    • Caravan to L.A. Zoo, because it is the weekend and therefore we go to the L.A. Zoo.
    • Look at zoo animals.
    • Get in line for lunch.
    • Take Baguette for a walk, because the line is too long. (Mr. Sandwich)
    • Realize that Baguette is screaming, and Mr. Sandwich is waving energetically from outside the cafeteria.
    • Take Baguette and try to comfort her.
    • Realize that 5 feet away, a zoo docent is holding a small constrictor.
    • Consider one’s pathological fear of snakes.
    • Ask Baguette if she wants to touch a snake.
    • Confirm with Baguette that she wants to touch a snake.
    • Hold Baguette while she touches the snake.
    • Wash Baguette’s hands.
    • Eat lunch.
    • Leave zoo.
    • After Baguette falls asleep in the car, take advantage of the situation to trim her fingernails while Mr. Sandwich runs into the hardware store.
    • Go home and let Baguette unwind.
    • Make brownies for Baguette to take to day care the next day for her actual birthday.
    • Watch Baguette start to spool up again when grandparents and great-aunt rejoin us for dinner.
    • Try to prevent meltdown.
    • Fail.
    • Take Baguette into her room, comfort her, and tell her that she can take time to calm down, but that we will be in the living room so she doesn’t feel abandoned.
    • Give Baguette iPad when she asks for it. (Mr. Sandwich)
    • Be grateful that, this time, the iPad helps her come out of the meltdown instead of exacerbating it, because there is no predicting.
    • Send grandparents out for In-N-Out.
    • Welcome Baguette when she comes back to the living room, feeling better.
    • Feed Baguette one of her favorite noodle dishes.
    • Tell Baguette that we will be on patio, and that she can come out when she wants to.
    • Eat In-N-Out while Baguette plays with party games on back lawn.
    • Say goodbye to grandparents and great-aunt, who are returning to respective homes on Monday.
    • Give Baguette a bath.
    • Open a few gifts for Baguette and talk to her about what they are and which of her friends gave them to her.
    • Write thank-you notes to those friends.
    • Wrangle Baguette into bed.
    • Sleep fitfully.

    Monday

    • Put brownies in car.
    • Take thank-you notes to day care, along with party favor for one guest who didn’t get one.
    • Give brownies to teacher.
    • Realize that Baguette would still really prefer to have some quiet time.
    • Recognize that at this point there is nothing to be done about that.
    • Drop off thank-you notes.
    • Wonder how ABA will go tonight.
    • Wonder how birthday phone call with aunt and uncle will go tonight.
    • Wonder if Baguette will catch stomach bug that is running rampant through her school.
    • Think about how, at this rate, it will take several days to open Baguette’s presents.
    • Go to work.
    • Really, really intend to write the rest of the thank-you notes.

    Little girl in chair, covering face with "Happy Birthday" balloon

  • You Can’t Win Them All

    Yesterday was a Day of Tantrums.

    It didn’t start out that way. Baguette woke up happy, because we were all there. Mr. Sandwich, who normally leaves at 6:00, was home to take care of some car repairs. I was about to get up; my alarm went off about two minutes after Baguette woke. There were snuggles and giggles and more snuggles.

    She did not want to get up and go in the living room with me; she wanted to stay and snuggle. But eventually I needed her to get up, and managed to relocate her. Getting her dressed, on the other hand, was a different matter.

    First, she didn’t want to take off her pajamas. Putting on pants wasn’t a problem, but she raged against the first two shirts I offered her, throwing them across the room. All of this was accompanied by screams.

    She screamed at me when I changed clothes, retrieving my pajamas in an attempt to put them back on me.

    And then, once we got to her school, she ran up to sit next to a little boy and play with the toys he had out.

    Back home, she wanted Play-Doh–as she always does, these days–but she screamed rather than say “please,” and then she screamed instead of saying “sorry.” So the Play-Doh went away.

    Later, she found another container of Play-Doh. Rolling it flat led to screaming. Packing it into a ball, or returning it to the container? More screaming. I handed her a wooden block in the shape of a cylinder so she could roll it out herself. She screamed as she rolled, tears streaming down her face.

    She couldn’t tell her what was making her so angry and upset, no matter how we asked. Instead, she just screamed. So that Play-Doh went away.

    Finally, dinner calmed her down. And you’d think all that screaming would wear a tiny body out, but no. She was up until nearly 10.

    Although on the plus side, she slept the whole night through. Can we call that a win? I’m having trouble answering that question.

    can't talk, having a tantrum

    Photo by Photos by Mavis, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

  • Best Saturday Ever (So Far)

    Yesterday Baguette started taking swim classes again, and then we had lunch at Carl’s Jr. with Bestie and her family, in what has become something of a Saturday tradition. (It used to be McDonald’s, but we all got tired of McDonald’s, and their “we’re a coffee house” rebranding means that they don’t have booths, which we really need to corral two bubbly little girls, and for crying out loud, why don’t fast food places have changing stations?)

    After we eat, we go outside to the tiny strip of grass behind the parking lot and let the girls run around. They have a playdate, energy gets burned off, and then we go our separate ways for naptime.

    Baguette is nap-resistant (as I may have mentioned), and yesterday she only slept for an hour before coming out to the living room. But it turned out that the pool and the playing really had worn her out, and she fell back asleep with us–and stayed that way for almost another two hours.

    That meant that I spent Saturday afternoon with my daughter snuggled up against me under a blanket and the dog in her bed next to us, while Mr. Sandwich and I stretched out from opposite ends of the couch and watched several–several!–back episodes of Cougar Town.

    Later on, there was a massive meltdown (purple snow pants were both essential and intolerable). But that doesn’t take away from the fact that when all of us were cosy and curled up together as a family, I had everything I’ve ever wanted in life. all in one place, all at the same time. It was the best, most magical Saturday afternoon I’ve ever had.

    This morning Baguette wanted to ride her tricycle, and let me tell you, helping a little girl in robot pajamas and pink owl rainboots steer around the block on a Radio Flyer trike? Makes for a pretty good Sunday morning, too.

    Radio Flyer & Tricycle

    Photo by mollypop, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

  • It’s Friday, Right?

    I feel like this week has gone on for about a year.

    Monday was a holiday, and so being us, we went snowshoeing. Baguette loves the snow, but we dramatically underestimated how quickly a not-quite-three-year-old can get wet and cold.

    Tuesday we went back to work, and Baguette went back to school. Honestly, I don’t really remember Tuesday.

    Wednesday we had Baguette’s in-network evaluation for speech therapy. More on that in another post; for this one, let’s just say that the appointment started late and ran longer than we expected; Baguette missed snack time and got very grouchy; she napped for a grand total of 25 minutes; and at the end of the day we had a conference with one of her teachers. More on that in another post, too.

    Thursday was crazy busy, and also rainy. That meant that Baguette got to wear her raincoat and boots. It also meant that she wanted her umbrella, which I did not have time to find. In the evening she ate and ate and ate.

    This morning I dropped her off at day care, narrowly avoiding an umbrella-related meltdown, and one of her teachers referred to “the breakfast she doesn’t eat any of.” Which explains the evening hunger. And then work was crazy busy again, with much soothing of ruffled feathers in some directions and prodding in others.

    So now we’re home, and while a hat-stacking-related meltdown led Baguette to declare her interest in “go bed,” we are back up. There has been playing with “A-B-C Puzzle” and her new dump truck–it arrived today, and I realized that I order so many things from Amazon that everyday is Christmas. At the moment we’re winding down (I hope) with Sesame Street, and if we’re really lucky, she’ll actually go to sleep and let us watch a sitcom. Ha!

    So I leave you with this:

    elephant dinosaur robot toys
    An elephant, a dinosaur, and a robot walk into a bar . . .