(Unintentional) Violence is not the answer

I know we’re not the only ones with a nearly two year old who can lose her mind at the drop of the hat for seemingly little or no reason at all. Hence these websites: reasonsmysoniscrying.com and themetapicture.com/why-my-kid-is-crying/. Funny stuff. And it’s pretty normal, from what we can tell, especially when they still can’t quite communicate verbally as clearly as we or they’d like. Hannah has had a few meltdowns lately, she’s been fighting a stomach bug and the discomfort and lack of appetite causes her to be crankier than usual, you know like the Snickers commercials.

However, I’m here to address a distant cousin of that behavior – the joy of causing mom and dad pain. Toddlers love cause and effect. I throw down my cup, mom or dad picks it up. I scatter food everywhere and Cleo comes scrambling. We do our best to not reinforce it, or worse, giggle, but it’s tough. But I’ve never, in my life, laughed through so much physical pain.

Here’s a rundown from just the last couple of weeks. Pulling mommy’s hair (to Hannah’s defense, there’s a lot there to grab!) causes a shriek. Grabbing daddy’s cheeks with both hands like a zombie grandma gets a loud “ow ow ow”! The past two weeks I’ve sported battle wounds from sharp little nails on my forehead, cheeks, and the back of the neck (riding the horse is fun!). She damn near poked my eyeball out while practicing anatomy identification. Every time it happens we try not to encourage it, but her adorable smile and infectious chuckle just melts us. We’re suckers and we know it. The worst of it, though, happened about 10 minutes before the Super Bowl this past weekend.

Sam was innocently helping Hannah pick up her books. As Sam lay there on her back Hannah walked up with “Time for Bed Sleepyhead“, a 1/2 inch board book that weighs a good 2-3 pounds, and gave it to mommy. Unfortunately, she didn’t just hand it to her, she dropped it with the binding straight down and Sam caught it with her face. Right on the nose. I was in the kitchen cleaning up and heard a little yelp and a meek “Jacob” and looked to see Sam rushing to the bathroom face in her hands. Hannah just smiled and watched having no idea what she’d done (at least we hope). I didn’t realize what happened until I went into the bathroom where, much to my concern, I saw blood everywhere. On the toilet. On the floor and the counter. Looked like a scene right out a movie that you wouldn’t watch past midnight. Later we saw it all over the light switch.

Luckily for Sam it just caught her right on the tip – easy for me to say because it wasn’t my nose, we all know how much it hurts to get hit in the sniffer – and caused a lot of bleeding, but evidently no breakage or serious damage. Of course Hannah went into hysterics because mommy was upset and in pain and couldn’t pick her up and daddy was rushing around getting towels and ice. After a few minutes the ladies of the house were calmed down and back to normal, but for a minute you’d think you walked into a barroom brawl!

We know we have a lot of work to do to curb the innocent, but painful  acts of our curious little hellion, and I’ve heard from those who have boys that Hannah’s antics are mild in comparison, but for right now one of our biggest struggles is suppressing the humor we find in her destructive ways. Who knows, the girl just might have a future in physical comedy, we just need her to smash watermelons and not our faces!