It's hard to be a toddler

Today, our morning began in typical fashion. Margaret woke up around 6:00, and I brought her into bed with us. At which point, she started to fuss and complain. She fussed when Abby read her books, she fussed when I brought her a piece of bread, and she fussed whenever anything generally "untoward" happened. About the only thing that kept her happy was Maddie. But Maddie gets very nervous around the kids since they're liable to start fussing at any moment which Maddie does not enjoy. It's a lovely predicament - Margaret is fussing so we call Maddie who doesn't like to be around when Margaret is fussing even though Maddie can quell the fussing. So you can understand the situation that we're dealing with these days.

It got even better later in the morning. Maddie, Margaret and I went to the park while Abby when to an open house at our local public elementary school. Despite the notorious state of most DC public schools, the reputation of our local school is surprisingly positive. Since we're starting to think about Margaret's future education, and correspondingly are considering where we'll live long term, we figured that Abby would check it out. But this digression deserves a post of it's own, so I'll get back to the main theme of today's post. Fussiness.

Once we all got back home, I put together an early lunch while Abby and Teddy hung out on the couch and Margaret wandered around in her usual way. At some point, that wandering degenerated into a display that I hadn't seen before - lying on the ground face down while kicking and screaming. A classic temper tantrum. While we watched Margaret voice her frustration with life, Abby noted that she'd seen this behavior once or twice before.

The really fun aspect of that tantrum, and others, is that it wasn't clear what actually set Margaret off. Actually, the immediate cause of the tantrum was clear (me eating one of her graham crackers), but the reason for its severity was tough to understand. It turns out that once Margaret starts ratcheting up her cries, the underlying cause isn't important - fussiness inevitably begets more fussiness.

Later, after a nap, we made the mistake of trying to get her photo taken for a passport. You would think that the photo guy and I were going to torture her on the stool given her response to being placed on it. Having two young kids of his own, the photo guy was quite sympathetic, but he also didn't want to hang around as she screamed every time he came near her and raised the camera. Margaret and I wandered around the store for a while before I finally got her to be reasonably calm on the stool. The photo guy gave me the camera, and I snapped the picture, although he told me that the passport people might object to the fact that you can't see both ears in the picture (dang anti-terrorism regulations.) But I think that both ears are reasonably visible, and I wasn't going to try for another one.

We then had fussiness when shopping for baby clothes. And when driving home. And then screaming and arching of the back when I put her in the stroller to take Maddie for a walk. And then more screaming during the bath - you'd think that I was waterboarding her given her response to the bath. (Torture would appear to be an apt metaphor for what happens to her on a daily basis given her response to the various slights that she experiences and impediments that she faces.)

All of this inevitably leads to plaintive cries as Margaret pleads for her pacifier while using one of her newest phrases: "Nuk, nuk." I have no idea how we're going to get rid of that dang thing.

As for Teddy, he fusses in his own way, but he's pretty easy to placate. And he's working on his smile.


In other news, Eleanor was in town last weekend, so here are some pics of that and other stuff: