Some days aren’t you just ready to quit? Yesterday, for reasons beyond my control or no reason at all, both of my toddler boys were cranky.

Typically my children wake up happy in the morning, play and romp around until lunchtime, eat and then take a nice two hour or so nap. After resting time, as we call it in our house, the boys get up and play and look forward to Daddy coming home from work. They help me make dinner and set the table, clean up the toys to make the house look nice again and then wrestle with Daddy until we eat. After dinner it’s usually more playtime with Daddy and then time for bedtime stories and a bath and by 8:15 or so they’re tucked in their beds on their way down for a good twelve hour sleep.

It sounds ideal, especially since we’re talking about a just-turned-three year old and a twenty month old boy. Of course, it doesn’t always go as planned.

Yesterday was one of those days. Oddly enough, both boys woke up in the morning crying and whining. (Why does it always have to be both on the same day?) Before we’d even been able to eat breakfast both boys had already thrown at least one fit (heaven forbid I gave them the wrong spoon to eat their yogurt!) and it just went downhill after that. By ten o’clock in the morning I was ready to put them both back in bed. It seemed that they couldn’t play for two minutes without there being a major crisis, and then they’d just throw back their heads and scream.

Finally after lunch I was able to put them down for a nap. Both boys fell asleep almost immediately and I crossed my fingers that they’d take an especially long nap so they could wake up and be my normal happy boys again. Unfortunately it didn’t work out that way. A mere forty five minutes into their nap my youngest yelled out and wouldn’t be comforted back to sleep. Ten minutes after that his brother also woke up crying and was done with his rest.

We tried lots of quiet activities to help calm them during the afternoon– playing with playdoh, reading books, coloring. Still the whole day was just full of whining and tantrums and a whole lot of tears. When their Daddy got home from work the boys didn’t even acknowledge him– they were too busy complaining that they didn’t want what we were having for dinner and they wanted the blue plates, not the orange ones.

I finally realized that my twenty month old was probably cranky because his second molars are starting to come in. He’s always had a hard time with teething. A low dose of Infant Tylenol did wonders to help him feel better and actually be able to sleep through the night. My three year old though had no apparent excuses, it was just an off day. Luckily both kids went to bed right at 8 and slept well and today has been a much happier day.

It’s hard as a mom to not feel like you just want to throw in the towel and curl up in your own bed when the kids are so cranky. What do you do to cope with days like I had yesterday? Let me know what I can do to keep my sanity and help my children get past these grumpy episodes by adding your comments.

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