“I’ll take the iPad away!”

Yes. 

I was the one that said it.

And yes, as it happens, it worked.

Roll back a bit, and I’ll explain.

Since Oliver has been sitting up the table, we [stupidly] started to use the iPad to distract the boys at the breakfast/dinner/tea table, as a means to shove more food into them, as they’d otherwise run away.  I’ve blogged about this before, so won’t rehash old hashes. But we used it.

Then, it got worse.

We bought another one, as the little monsters were arguing about it, and I feared for the safety of my iPad. (In fact, I should have let it break, as this would’ve fixed the problem, nipping it in the bud.) But, nonetheless, we did.  Nectar points, that I had previously deemed worthless, seemed to have amounted to some value, namely two-thirds of an iPad, hence, we sprung for another.

Worth pointing out, that my boys don’t have “an iPad each” – admittedly, the number-count of my children does equal the number-count of iPad devices in our house, but this is purely an accident. They are allowed to utilise the iPads for their education, information and entertainment purposes *only*, but they are not ‘pre-allocated’ to a particular child.  (They simply haven’t signed out the mobile/tablet under the Brett Rigby IT Policy… joke.)

Anyway, I digress.

Jack occasionally over-boils. He’s allowed at times, I guess, when the weight of the world is on his shoulders, he sometimes pops his lid, and mostly in the direction of Claire and myself.  He seems to do this when he’s had time in the company of someone who can direct all of their attention at him (my parents, or at the in-laws, for example) and then when he comes home, the stark reality of normal life is a bit overwhelming. Pop.

The ONLY thing that I’ve found that appears to hurt him (so to speak) is the threat of me taking the iPad away to work with me. I kid you not, although I wish it were a joke. I’ve threatened to stop him from going to his weekly Karate lessons, stop him from riding his bike and/or scooter, stop him from doing ANYTHING that I had previously thought that he loved doing, but to no success.

Me: “I’ll take the iPad away”
Him:  <silence>

It’s not like the little monster even uses it a great deal anyway. But this really does the job, and I’m not sure how I feel about that yet.  He and Oliver are far from “the Geek’s children” and affixed to a phone/tablet/computer at any given opportunity. Far from it. But it’s odd that he’s like this about it. 

However. On the flip-side, the iPad is THE best treat/reward for doing something, such as homework (yes, he’s five and gets homework!).  Ten minutes on the iPad for doing some ‘boring’ handwriting and reading a book? Pfft. No problem.

Will see how this pans out.

“That’s booorring!”

So, young Master Oliver can talk, and it quite obviously expressing his disinterest in… well, lots of things!  It’s past his bedtime, on a school night (Sunday), and Oliver is shouting things about the room by himself, aimed mostly at me.

“Bedtime’s boring!”

He seems to wind himself up into a little state, making his face go all red – the contrast between his rosy-red face and his blonde hair, coupled with those little blue eyes, makes him look  quite funny.

I don’t remember Jack every saying that something was boring, especially in the tone that Oli is throwing about at the moment.  But then, I think that Jack didn’t have an older brother to bring new words home from school.

Right now, I’ve put him into bed a couple of times already, and I know he’s tired – shattered, actually, as he’s not been allowed to sleep today – but he’s still chuntering away to himself about how “Daddy’s naughty” and “I don’t want my daddy”.  His latest thing, is that he’s threatening to put me in the stingy nettles in the garden. Pleasant, I’m sure.

< two minutes later />

He’s just asked for a drink and a tissue, so I’ve changed from being the ‘baddie’ to being the ‘goodie’, as he’s had a drink, wiped his nose (sort of) and then given me a little kiss on my cheek before laying down to go to sleep.

And then there was silence.

Better go and get rid of those nettles before he wakes up…

Midnight Screams!!!

BANG!

It was the dead of night, and the noise woke me instantly.

I must have gone from fast asleep to completely 100% wide-awake in a small fraction of a very fast split second; in this time, I knew what had happened as, just then, it started….

WWWWWHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Yep, Jack had fallen out of bed at 03:30 in the morning. But not just any bed; Ours, which is quite high off of the floor.  But (luckily/unluckily) I wasn’t in it, so I had to climb out of the spare bed, realise where I was, navigate the piles of junk that we’re in the middle of sorting out, out the bedroom down the hallway a bit and into our bedroom to find Claire trying to calm down the ever-so-slightly upset Jack.

This was not an ordinary night, as the events earlier in the evening were almost trying to tell us.

Around 11:00ish, Jack woke up screaming, and I mean very loudly.  He seems to wind himself up into these screaming, crying tantrums, that it’s difficult to know what to do with him.  He doesn’t want to be picked up, he doesn’t then want to be put back in his bed/cot, you can’t soothe him, calm or anything. Nightmare. I can only conclude that this behaviour must be from his mum’s side.

Eventually, he went back to sleep, but only for a bit, as at 01:30, he’s awake again crying and screaming.  As I was due to go to work the next morning, Claire took over, which was good, as there was extra flappy-arms-screaming-paddy-tantrums when I tried to pick him up; his mum was ok, but not me.  Fine - I went to bed and was soon followed by Claire with a somewhat calmer Jack, but one that didn’t want to sleep in his bed, so she brought him into ours to see if that might help things.

For the record, Jack has never successfully slept in our bed. Ever. Even when he was really small, he only ever slept in his Moses basket/crib/thing or in his cot in the other bedroom.  So, to think that it might work was a bit of a faff. 

Knowing this sleeping situation would not work, I volunteered to sleep in the other bedroom, which was good for me, as I managed to sleep until the 03:30 awakening.  Claire, on the other hand, (bless her) didn’t manage to get any sleep, as Jack would wake every 20-30 minutes and have a bit of a cry, only to be soothed back to sleep instantly by his mum.

Getting up for 06:30 normally isn’t too much of a problem, but that day, strangely, it was…  Ho-hum. Fun and games of having kids, I suppose!

I’ve just added a ‘Tantrums’ category to the blog site… I have a feeling that I might be needing that in future.