Parenting

Recently, I've realized just how frustrating parenting can be especially with a 2 year old who thinks he runs the show. The funny thing is that as soon as you think you've handled something, another something pops up and needs to be fixed. It's a constant struggle and so frustrating when you feel like you're not really getting anywhere.

We've been home for a week from the hospital and as soon as we headed home Ethan started acting up. Let me back up. He was acting up in the hospital but we let a lot of things slide because he was in the hospital, there was nowhere to do a proper time out and well, we were really tired. Enough with the excuses. It made it much harder to fix when we got home.

In the hospital Ethan starting hitting people. For the most part he was very compliant with nurses, doctors and respiratory therapists, but with mommy, daddy & grammy he would sometimes hit just to hit. It's hard not to yell when you're being beamed in the head by a toddler hand. When we got home the time outs started back up again full force.

On our second night home he ended up in time out 3x in a 10 minute period at Nana & Papa's house. He always seems to comply better when Daddy puts him in timeout. Mostly, I think, because he hates for daddy to be upset with him. We spent the next few days in and out of time out and setting new limits.

I think we're finally starting to get to a spot where he's doing very well with choices and following directions. He's still very stubborn. We currently struggle with getting him to hold our hands while crossing the street and behaving in stores. Before our trip to the hospital he loved going into stores, stayed close by and greeted everyone he met. Now he in on the floor throwing a tantrum in front of store employees. My first response was to just let him have his tantrums no matter how embarrassing it was, but the floor was disgusting. We eventually got it under control.

It's a constant struggle, but I love being his mom no matter how hard it gets.