The Queen's Rambles

Even with my mom here, I still never get a moment to post an entry. Elsa is a mama’s girl. It’s all me, all the time. I’m pretty well exhausted.

We went to the ped today and had an interesting time of it. They have a new doctor and I’m going to go to her from now on. She’s about my age, she also cloth diapers, she was ok with extended breastfeeding and co-sleeping though she did say if we were not getting enough sleep it would be better to get Elsa into a crib sooner rather than later because of some developmental things that will happen at 15 months. I need to take that under advisement because I am damned tired. Erik never moved when we co-slept. Elsa never holds still.

We got a bit of bad news. She has anemia, which sort of makes sense since she isn’t eating all she should be eating. They did a finger prick at the office, but we have to take her to the lab tomorrow and have a real blood draw from a vein to get better numbers. I’m so looking forward to that. What hell that shall be. My poor baby.

I think I must have an iron deficiency as well. I’m tired all the time, I have dark circles, I’m cranky. It wouldn’t hurt to pick up some iron tablets, I suppose.

I also need to pick up some kind of parenting book for five year olds. Erik is a wonderful, smart, funny, charming little boy but sometimes he is a straight up asshole.

I can no longer host any official MOMS Club things at my house because he turns into a sulky, pouty, brat and tells the kids to go away. He refuses to participate. He is mean.

I babysat a sweet little two year old for an hour last week and Erik was a total jerk to him. The little boy loves Erik and wants to follow him around. For some reason that irritates Erik and he kept telling im to go away and leave him alone.

He is also really rude to a few of his less preferred friends.

I thought have a two year old throw a temper tantrum at a restaurant was embarrassing, but it’s got nothing on my five year old being a jerk face to my friends’ children. Punishing him seems to make it worse. Talking about it seems to make it worse. The only thing that works is for the other kid to go away and play and ignore him. He’ll slowly make his way over to the other kid and want to play. Try explaining that to another little kid, though.

Today we were talking about how rude he has been and I was telling him that if he kept acting like that he wouldn’t have any friends left. He said “Mommy, I just think there’s something wrong with my brain. You have to fix it. And you have to fix my soul.”

If only I could.

I’m sure there must be a book or theory or blog or something out there that deals with a kid who won’t be nice. Believe me, I’ve tried things. Time-outs, taking away of toys, talking, guilting him, giving him rewards when he is nice. None of it matters. I am at my wit’s end and the behavior is just getting worse. Is this a phase? Someone tell me it’s a phase. I’m used to a charming boy who likes to be friends with everyone. I’ve always been so happy that he’s really self-confident and expressive, but it’s not so great when he clearly and loudly states that he wants the other kid to go away.