It's Official - We Just Had Our First Temper Tantrum

Life can be so very hard for our little eight month old. Two naps a day, eleven hours of sleep a night, having Mommy here to entertain all day, cute outfits fill the closet, diaper changed more frequently than any other baby I know....Life is so, so hard. Today, it just became too much. The volcano erupted. Sad, but true.

I thought we were having a good day. Kylie slept in, plenty of laughs all morning long, a decent mid-morning nap, then off to visiting teaching. Little fussy during our visit, but that is to be expected, when it is around lunch time, which it was. We get home, and that's when the trouble started. I took her out of her car seat, snuggled her a little, and then attempted to put her in her booster seat for her lunch of delicous peas mixed with oatmeal. Now, peas aren't exactly her favorite, but she normally eats them without incident. Not today...I sat her in her chair, strapped her in, and she immediately burst into tears. This has happened before, I usually ignore it, and get the feeding started. She normally as soon as the food hits her mouth, becomes cheerful again (she gets that from her mother...). Today when I fed her a spoonful of peas, she spit them back out all over my face and favorite green sweater. Fiesty little gal, I think in my head. She then takes her fists, pounds them on her little tray, while screaming and kicking. I decide to take her out and try to comfort her (all the books say you want to keep meal time as pleasant as possible), but she then screams louder and kicks me and pushes me away. That's when I knew, THIS WAS A TEMPER TANTRUM. She did that for about five minutes, until I distracted her with a book.

We eventually got over it, but I feel a little damaged. I feel like she turned on me. My sweet little happy gal, my pal, she let me have it today. I tried to play with her all afternoon to show her that everything is okay, but I'm a little sad. I knew the day would come when she would express herself this way. She's too much like me to be a sweet little flower, without opinions or a voice. I just didn't imagine it would come this quickly. But it did. I still love her just as much as before, but I have a new admiration for my Mom. I'm pretty sure I gave her a temper tantrum every day for at least the first 18 years of my life...Love you Mom!