theITbaby

the IT city, the I.T. Baby

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This morning I set my tantrum throwing baby in the yard

Tantrums are new to me. While I’ve had episodes with Maggie before, it’s gotten into a thing where she violently throws back her head, clenches her baby fists, and screams.

Maggie meets R2D2
Maggies meets R2D2 at Star Wars Day

This morning she went from grumpy to meltdown, slammed her head into my collarbone, and that was it for keeping any semblance of happy baby. Happy baby had left and two and a half hours later she’s still not returned.

Maggie I think is getting frustrated. She can almost walk but not quite, can’t crawl very far without extreme effort (she crawls oddly,) and is having issues understanding the difference between the five or so words she can say.

So today after kicking, screaming, not wanting to be held, not wanting to be left alone, etc we went into the back yard, I plopped her down, moved a few steps away and plopped down, and watched as the rather nice day overwhelmed the demon inside her.

I never got out of eyesight, my intent was not to cut her off, it was mostly just to give her a world of things to look at and also get her out of the house as you can hear a crying baby pretty much anywhere and ITmama was still in bed.

It’s interesting though as usually I can sort of spot these coming on and today was just absurd. I attempted holding the screaming bundle of mess, that lead to her fighting me, I attempted setting her on her own inside, that lead to shrieks of despair, I attempted hugging and got serious skin pulling.

Outside with a world to see she calmed down, started to enjoy the world, came up and sat on my lap and I thought that all was going in the right direction. She then dove headfirst into the grass setting off another tantrum.

Will point out that she dove from a sitting position, this was not a fall, this was a straight up dive. Then the tears started again.

After that, there was no complete return of happy baby. I had to go to work and she was a grump when I left. I’m not really sure where this is going – if this is the new standard, or a really unpleasant anomaly.

It’s broken my two or three month long streak of thinking I sort of had it figured out. I think I’m going to stick with the placing her in an area where there aren’t a ton of distractions, be near her without in skin damage proximity, and see how that works.

I’m wondering if there’s a group out there that claims that makes me a horrible parent. It’s been a while since I trolled a group.

Paul King

Paul King lives in Nashville Tennessee with his wife, two daughters and cats. He writes for Pocketables, theITBaby, and is an IT consultant along with doing tech support for a film production company.