What a week...

What a week…
I jinxed myself last week. I wrote that Hayden has been not so angry- that she resembled a “good” kid… Fast forward to Saturday- the Angry Little Diva returns. In full force. Apparently the miraculous arrival of her second tooth also possessed her to become a holy terror. That and the fact that she openly prefers her grandmother over her own mother have me on the verge of losing my mind. That is why I am posting a full 24 hours later than I usually do. I honestly am so exhausted from her antics that I had no idea what day it was. If it hadn’t been for a friend of mine who asked when I was going to post today, I wouldn’t be writing this.
Anyway… Orange is Hayden’s sleeping buddy. Orange is a stuffed orange seahorse that I won at a crappy carnival game this past summer. She has selected this ugly looking, big head (wait a minute… maybe that’s why she loves him, because he too has a big head… interesting) cheap stuffed animal as the companion she cannot live without. I allowed this stupid looking creature to move in with my baby girl because I couldn’t take it out of her clutches while she slept. She looked so cute grasping him for dear life.
Needless to say, all things that I think are “fine” usually aren’t. This was no exception. Hayden usually cries herself to sleep for naps. I don’t know what it is, but she needs to cry for two to three minutes before she’ll pass out in a heap. Saturday night, I gave her the bottle, kissed her good night, and put her in her crib as usual. I grabbed the monitor and downstairs I went to pour myself a congratulatory glass of Cabernet. (What? No one else celebrates surviving another day with a glass of wine?) As usual she stood there crying. I watched. Still crying. I still watched. Her usual protest turned into fits of hysteria. After a full twenty minutes, I began to panic. Against what every book I have ever read has advised, I went up and entered her room. Sure enough, Orange was on the floor. She had thrown him overboard and was hysterical without him. I grabbed Orange and helped rock her to sleep.
I called my husband and told him about the incident. It was “cute” how much she loved her Orange. You know what wasn’t cute?... When she began to repeat this for every nap the entire week. I would watch her intently on the monitor. Here were the sequences of events: I put her down… She begins to cry… She stands up… She dangles poor Orange over the edge… She is quiet while she threatens his life… She drops him…. Silence… Hysteria. Fabulous.
Oh, and she really dislikes me. Most children have separation anxiety when their parents drop them off to go to work. Not Hayden. I leave her with my Mom and she waves “bye bye” with a huge smile on her face. I go to pick her up- hysterical crying. I literally have to pry her off my mother. If I have to listen to her scream the entire way home one more day, I’m actually going to lose my mind.
Speaking of random- I’m addicted to my Blackberry, or as my friends call it, my Crackberry. On top of having a crazy week at work, Hayden going into possessed mode, and backing my car into my fathers Jeep, I’ve had an intervention regarding my “problem” with my phone.
I think if I write about it, then I’ll be able to deal with it. I can’t live without that phone in my hand. I check my e-mail constantly. I mean constantly. I think it’s so funny that this is actually a problem. My mother asked me to please stop checking e-mail while at red lights, one of my best friends asked that I didn’t respond to e-mails when we were out at dinner (Really? I do that? Apparently.) and my husband is constantly asking what’s so important and who am I writing to. I think that my job (Realtor) involves me having to be constantly available and I’m from a generation of instant gratification and I offer instant gratification to my clients. Ask me the list price of a new house on the market, I’ll answer you within five minutes. Need to know an inspectors phone number- I’ll bbm it to you in seconds. I am a product of an instant gratification age.
So as of yesterday, I am trying to not check e-mail while driving (I’m so embarrassed to admit that I do that- but I literally can’t help it) and trying to keep my phone in another room when playing with Hayden. I should have known something was wrong with me when Hayden would hold my phone correctly and act as though she is texting (she really does this) or holds it to her ear and speaks gibberish. Of course she does- that’s all she see’s her Mommy do.
Hm. That’s enough for tonight. Can you believe that I check e-mail while I’m at red lights? I can’t even believe I do that. I stand in the line at the grocery store and return e-mails. Hi, my name is Anna and I’m a textaholic.