My son made me cry today...

After a difficult day yesterday of taking my son to the dentist (yes, our fears have been realized that he would take after his father and bite the dentist) and saying, "No" to playing T ball on our main floor as well as several other ways I "failed" my son according to him, today he made me cry.

First, I should tell you about our struggle last night.  What started as a fit that I wouldn't let him play T-ball in the middle of the living room/dining room, ended up progressing"Grandma and Grandpa let me!"  (I'm not sure about that, so I won't throw them under the bus).  He was very unhappy about getting a bath and further unhappy about it not being in mommy and daddy's big bathtub.  He didn't want to take his clothes off.   He also informed me he didn't want mommy, he wanted Daddy!

 I locked him in the bathroom with me and sat calmly on the floor.  Time progressed and I still calmly explained how we needed to take a bath.  As I watched my three year old flail on the floor, (which made me think about how it had been a while since it had been scrubbed) I surprised him by showing him how the door stop makes a cool noise and movement.  This temporarily stopped the convulsions.  It's not lost on me that my dog, Dewey long ago would "fake seizures" to try to get out of wearing his special collar, my son practically mimics the movement, but it's not a seizure, but it does have a destructive effect on the environment.

As we both played with our respective door stops
and he calmed down, I pulled one sock off of him.  He was not pleased.  He tried to throw it into the bathtub.  I was not pleased.  He then somehow got it on the top of the towel rack.  I encouraged him to take the other sock off and throw that at the previous sock to try to get it down.  This didn't work for his objective, but as he tried to get his sock back (and got the other one stuck in another place) the encouragement to remove the rest of his clothing to try to get the socks back worked.  I had fun watching him problem solve how he was going to get his clothes back while I smiled inside that I had gotten him to get ready for his bath and to undress without him even realizing it and without an additional tantrum.

Anyways, I knew I wasn't his favorite parent yesterday (especially for the part where I had to hold him down at the dentist).  Today, as we were playing as a family, he found his American Flag and was demanding that I sing the National Anthem.  I told him, "I don't sing on demand".  He then looked at me with that childhood innocence and said, "Please sing beautiful singer!".  Yep, that made me cry.  He may be becoming a bigger boy each day, but he actually sees me as a  "beautiful singer".  He doesn't like when I sing all the time, he pretty much never likes it when my husband sings but apparently he has some respect for my musical ability and for beauty.