I'll have some cheese with that whine

When I read Mad's post last night I wanted to cry. I, too, am sometimes filled with anger - anger that there is not one moment to myself. Anger that although there are two parents in this household, M only and ever wants one of us. My name (my mother name) is screeched and called and hollered and whined and thrown on the ground and kicked and screamed.

I have nowhere to go. I can't escape it, even for a few moments as it's constant and exhausting and it's all I can do at the end of the day not to sink into exhaustion and weep onto my pillow, from the ending and the altogether too quickly returning of it all.

I escape to work, I drop M off after a thousand heartaches: wrong socks, mommie! me no like bananas, no way I wear that coat. I breathe a deep sigh, I sit for a moment, and then careen off to the other demanding child, the one that rears it's head and raises it's voice and bites at my ankle all day long.

And then I race at warp speed back to pick up M in time (must be on time) and take yet another deep breath before heading in and gathering her sweetness up in my arms and starting all over.

It wasn't always like this. My sweet and agreeable and happy little girl has been recently replaced with a whining, screaming, kicking child. This started weeks ago before she got sick, (a sick by the way, that is on the mend, thank you for your kind thoughts). On a dime, these things occur. While chopping vegetables for dinner, while washing dishes, while on the phone. These things occur. A pint sized typhoon whirls herself around the kitchen and throws herself on the floor in hysterics. I step over her with a glass of wine. Depending on the day, I am amused, others, I want to put my hand through a wall.

I know it's a phase. A sweet, normal (yet to whom?) and amusing phase that causes my home unhappiness. It's not fun at Casa Talia. It's not fun when it is like this.

My name is Jen. I am fascinated by how the fabric and rhetoric of our society slowly erodes communities. I love to make guacamole and eat it with a bag of salty chips and a cold Dos Equis in a green bottle. I love to sit alone all day and read. I can listen to Joni Mitchell till my ears fall off. I love claw foot tubs and far away places. I fantasize. I dream. And I sometimes feel like my voice has been silenced.

I am not looking for sympathy. But I am looking for a bit of advice. Is it simply a game of waiting out the whining/temper/general ick till the next phase happens? Or better, how do you talk to a child who is crying every 5 minutes? How do you engage with her so she can always know she is loved while at the same time, discouraging this behavior?

And while you are at it, perhaps we can solve global hunger and someone can explain to me how a fax machine really works.