Have you ever heard the saying that goes something along the lines of “Don’t like the weather? Just give it 10 minutes, it’ll change”? Well sometimes with a toddler that’s a very true statement, except change out the word “weather” for “mood” and the word “minutes” with “seconds”.
We recently went out to buy Isaac some new underwear. We have some hand-me-downs from Erin’s sister, but there are only 4 pair and with him having accidents in them sometimes it’s just not enough. Initially I tried to buy them at Target, only to find out that apparently NO TARGETS IN HOUSTON HAVE ANY TODDLER BOY UNDERWEAR!!! (I wish I was kidding, a woman who worked there actually did a search through their inventory and couldn’t find any) So after Erin got home one day we went down to a place called The Children’s Place to see if we could have better luck there.
Jackpot!
We got Isaac some briefs with footballs and football helmets on them, as well as some boxer briefs that have guitars on them. He was in hog heaven. Plus they had some hats on sale for 99 cents, so I had to buy him one.
We paid for everything, walked out the door and started walking back to the car. It was about a block because we’d parked by another store where we’d stopped first, and as soon as we were 10 feet from the store he started whining and semi-crying. He wouldn’t tell us what it was about, but he also wouldn’t stop. It went a little something like this:
Exhibit A: (Yes, that’s his 99 cent hat. Pretty awesome, right?)
Eventually we thought we knew why he was being like that, so we stopped and tested our theory. Let’s see if you can tell what we did and if you think it made a difference.
Exhibit B
If you guessed/noticed that we took off his shorts and that he’s now only wearing his underwear over his diaper (and is also now incredibly happy), you are absolutely correct. Apparently the thought of waiting 30 minutes to get home in order to put on his underwear was completely unacceptable. That underwear was bought and needed to be put on IMMEDIATELY.
A toddler’s emotional state, just give it a second…
My daughter was screaming during a tantrum the other day and then I asked her “do you like puppies?” And immediately the tantrum was done and she said very sincerely, “Oh yes, daddy. I yike puppies. A yot.” And we moved on.