Oh My What Have I Done?

There are some videos that your 20 month old child should never see…I mean never.

But we’ll get into that more later.

After a cross-country flight with a high school cheerleading team, the University of Texas women’s golf team, and a Sherwin Williams convention, I was glad to meet up with Jenn at the airport.  Even though it had only been two days, I couldn’t wait to get home and see Nolin.  I was also very excited to give him the toy that I had picked up for him.

I spent my last night and morning in San Diego trying to find a trolley to bring home for Nolin, but alas San Diego is not San Francisco and I couldn’t find one anywhere. So I got the next best thing…A Southwest Airlines Airplane that lights up and rolls forward when you pull it back.  Since he loved this airplane when he played with our friend’s a few months ago…I knew this would be a big hit.

We walked through the door and Nolin gave Jenn a huge hug.  Then he saw me, and got a huge smile on his face.

Nolin, I’ve got a prize for you I said as I pulled the airplane out from behind my back.  A huge smile and total look of awe came over his face.  Then I blew it.

To make this the best homecoming ever, I pulled out my computer to show Nolin some video I had taken the night before.  I may not have been able to get him a trolley, but I could bring the trolley to him.  Again he requested when the video came to an end. The next video came on. Again he requested. Then we ran out of videos, and I needed to eat dinner, so I put the computer away.

Trolley?! Trolley?! Again?! Trolley?!

We haven’t really had any major tantrums in almost 21 months, but this was a total melt down. Determined to not let him think that throwing his body through the air and crying would get him what he wanted, we tried to comfort him and assure him that the trolleys just went to sleep.

The tears though were real and there was no consoling him.  The airplane didn’t help nor did my songs or jokes.  He would laugh for a second and then the tears came back.  It was an emotional night and I guess this may be the beginning.

One lesson learned though:  The trolley video…well he won’t see that one again until he is old enough to read this blog, by then it hopefully wont be quite as traumatic.