Heading Into the Homestretch of Two-ness Means Lots of Screams, Tears and Headaches, (And That's Just From Me)

Well, welcome to the newest episode of “Baby Brigid: Unhinged.” We have had a dramatic change in temperament the last couple of weeks, some of which I wrote off to my being away for four days, but that can’t be the explanation for all of it. Brigid has become very contrary. Except when she’s not. She’ll scream, I mean really, really scream to the point where I think it must be hurting her throat. And then she’ll say something cute and calm like it’s all part of the same sentence. She shrieks if she doesn’t get her way, and collapses in a ball at my feet. She’ll come up for a hug and then start screaming in my ears, but if she is in the middle of a melt-down, she wants to be wrapped up in my arms. She doesn’t want to be put down, but she doesn’t want me to hold her. She wants no one but Ba-det except when she wants me. All this two weeks before she turns two. Don’t know if there’s a connection. I’m just saying.

I took the girls to the Ground Round last night for a quick dinner before the older two had tap class. No such thing as a quick dinner with an unhinged Brigid. She was a tyrant, screaming and shrieking, sometimes with tears, sometimes without. I became unhinged and took her out of the high chair, told Margaret and Patricia to order something and went out with Brigid. She wanted to get down and run around, but it was busy, so my saying “No” only brought on a new onslaught of screaming and temper. When her mac and cheese and grapes finally arrived, she ate them like she had just come off a hunger strike. She shoveled it in and sat very pleasantly, no memory of the demon baby she had been only moments before. I managed to get in a crock of soup, some of which she ate, too. But as soon as she was finished, she set off again. It was a good thing we were on a time schedule, and I had to get the girls to tap. It made for a great fast get-away. But once we were at tap, she continued her monstrous ways, screaming because she couldn’t go out into the studio. The waiting room at the studio is very cramped; it’s all of 15 feel long by about six feet wide, so there’s no where to walk, but Brigid insisted on walking back and forth, forcing all the parents who were sitting on the benches along the walls to pull in their feet every time we passed by. Then she’d scream at one end of the room, only to calm down long enough to get to the other end for another scream and shriek. She wanted Ba-det, who was tapping her heart out all the while hearing her baby sister causing such a ruckus. It’s no wonder I rarely go over to wait for the girls while they have class. Brigid makes it a marathon at the end of which I’m exhausted, and I haven’t even donned a pair of tap shoes. It wasn’t as if she wanted to go to bed. When we got home, a little after 7:30, she was raring to go. I gave her a bath in the new “big tub” downstairs, and she wanted to watch “Nemo” after, which we did. When it was 9 p.m. I said enough and got her comfortable on the big chair in her room. She was definitely ready to go to bed after a little nursing and she put up minimal protest when I put her in the crib. I was exhausted by the sheer force of nature that is our Brigid. Neither Jack nor I recall the other two being so volatile when they were this age. There are eggshells all over the floors of our house, and we’re getting very good at trodding on them as gently as we can.