pissy cranky vent

these last couple of days, my inner monologue has been little else besides a string of dark red expletives. i seem to be bursting with a seething mass of petty and violent rage. i'm at what they call the end of my tether..

there's a simple explanation, i suppose;
dan has the flu (or some generic brand of viral throat infection), and my last few nights have been consistently broken by large bouts of crying and howling, or else a constant pawing at my boobs and a small child unable to sleep unless he'd heaved his entire body on top of mine.

so my weariness is palpable as a constant heavy pain in my head.

and he is CRANKY, boy is he ever cranky. he's reverted back to a pre-verbal state of whining and crying, even throwing his body on the floor and sobbing, for little to no reason at all. his ability to wait up to 2 secs for something he's asked for has disappeared, so there's a split second gap between his asking for something and his having a fit about it.

and there's none of my usual relief from grandmas around, as his crankiness is such that he is impossible around others...
i've made the mistake, repeatedly, of trying to get some relief by hanging around my sister/mum/MIL with him, but that's in some ways even more difficult and frustrating than if i'd just brought him to the playground by myself.

some of my recent inner rages:
- i waited 55 minutes today at the GP for my appointment, with a toddler in tow. almost 1 hour!!! that strikes me as totally unacceptable. it turns out that "an emergency" cropped out for my GP, but even so no one had said a single word to me, just let me wait there for an hour with a toddler while the waiting room emptied around me, and not even cared.
he was ok with the wait, thankfully, though we did go outside and play on the steps for a while. some kid coughed right into his face though, while his dad watched indulgently; i grabbed a baby wipe and tried to sanitise dan's face.
i felt all sorts of murderous rages towards the receptionists. i signed out without a word, and tried to hurl the pen down as pissily as i could, and even tried to make the door slam on the way out (it didn't, only hissed slowly shut rebelliously). i envisioned hurling a rock through their windows, denting their cars, running over random innocent pedestrians. truly i did, this is the ugliness of my inner darkness.

- watching my MIL constantly grabbing dan's upper arms in death grips, as he WALKS around, "in case he falls". FOR FUCK'S SAKE.
what drives me up the wall, though, is that because of this constant tussling, he actually does fall quite frequently at her place, and only at her place. he's always trying to get away, and does things he would never do normally, like climb things and take big weird steps, or just be clumsy in general. and today he slipped on her oily kitchen floor, and got a raised hard red bump on his forehead, just to satisfy her underlying fears.
he would never normally fall like that... so my blaseness is constantly battling with her over anxiety, i can feel the tension in the room, and imagine all sorts of unspoken accusations about my laxness as a mother.
i absolutely and wholeheartedly believe that if you're constantly telling a child he's "going to fall", and gripping his arms with deathgrips (not even his hand FFS, but his upper arms!), he's going to switch off the part of his brain that evaulates how to do things safely, and he's just going to go hell for leather towards as much as he can get away with, just to attain that vestige of desperate freedom. it's anti-enabling at its best.

besides, everything in her home is designed to be treacherous for a toddler anyway. he always has to wear shoes indoors there, so he doesn't have the normal traction of bare feet or even flexible soft soles. the floor is tiled, and often oily. there are small steps everywhere, every living area indoors and out are at different heights. the garden is liberally scattered with concrete blocks and terracotta pots and raised uneven conrete edges everywhere.
and these are people who have their toddler grandson over 3 times a week, every week. simple things would make big changes, like putting a soft non-slip rug
at the single stair between the 2 living areas (which he crosses 1000 times a day, each and every time being accompanied by her frantic run and then The Grip), or even a small handle in the doorframe for him.

drives me up the wall, i tells you. of course i appreciate her involvement and help... but the costs seem big.


---
on that note, me and parenting / me and dan are definitely going through a rough patch.
yesterday i even actually shouted in his face, saying loudly "WAIT!" cos he was carrying on for the TV and i was getting it on as fast as i could.... he backed away and cried while looking at my face fearfully.... that is absolutely the pits.

i've been at that point so much recently, when he goes into a big carrying on demanding cryey whinge. like shouting while driving and hitting the wheel.. he got a bit scared and cried a little while hitting his knees in that same forceful way. or just swearing loudly and throwing my book or whatever it was i was trying to do. and that was all bad enough as it is.. but today was the first time i directed that anger right into his face.

it's just wrong that all my frustrations and anger seem to leak out toward him, the only person and thing i care about and above anything else in the world, yet i seem to be fighting the urge to throw him against the wall more and more, and the explosions of rage toward him are becoming more frequent.

and then there's the TV. i hate it, i hate i hate i hate i hate i hate i hate it.
granted, he's sick, so this is more intense than usual. but i don't know, maybe he is like this all the time as well?

it's:
him clamoring for the TV constantly, first thing when he wakes up (sometimes it's in the middle of the night if it occurs to him when he wakes), and he absolutely can't be talked out of it or distracted, he'll howl and cry heartbrokenly until he has it.
and occasionally he'll break away to play with his toys... but after a while he'll remember it and start up again. sometimes he'll go for ages without asking for tv again, other times it seems like we'd just turned it off.
sometimes the tv watching goes for 10 minutes before he goes off to play; other times, like today, it's non-stop...
any time we're at home, this'll happen, no matter what time of day/night.

we seem to only have good days when we go out, spend all day out (eg a music class, playground and park, a bit of shops or library), and even then the mornings and the evenings at home are rough.

i hate it so much. any time that questions of TV watching are raised, i always think - of course i don't want him to watch tv, of course i would prefer if he played or read or did something else.
but it started because a) he was having howling fits in the car, at even the smallest journey. the day i got the car dvd player, i had earlier pulled him out of the seat, thrown him into the front passenger footwell, then carried on driving while he sobbed standing there, almost losing his balance with every turn the car made, and me shaking in rage and wanting to drive us both into a large wall.
and b) the tv watching at home, because i found it bought me spaces in the day to sleep, get a meal, brush my teeth, or do whatever, because otherwise with him i was literally unable to do a thing, and i was losing my mind.

anyway then he's become more and more addicted to it, and our days became slaves to the dvd player. and now it's becoming more specific, it used to have to be the fucking wiggles, and now it has to be dorothy (the dinosaur), no one else, just dorothy, so i don't even get a break now, but have to slowly advance every dvd to catch the dorothy bits and only the dorothy bits.
and he's like this at the grandma's too. which makes me wonder, when he's there, is he just watching tv the whole time? i'd much rather fend for ourselves than that, but will they tell me the truth? and will i just make them as stressed as i am, imposing this on them?

and in the car, he'll clamor for it the instant he goes into his seat, can hardly wait for us to get into our seats and start the engine; every single car ride.

i've absolutely had it.

today when we reached the GPs, while he was still in his seat but refusing to come out because I hadn't let him watch any TV in the 4 mins it took to drive there; i wrenched the dvd player and its mounts off the seat, and threw it in the trunk while saying "No.Nore.TV, do you understand? TV.is.Gone.". not quite a shouty angry mummy, but definitely somewhere in that neighbourhood, and his face had the slight tinge of fear, but only just.

i'd like to really put my foot down more about tv at home.. though i'm not sure how and to what extent, and how much is reasonable anyway. and, should there be exceptions because he's sick right now?

i don't know if other mums who don't do the tv thing are just doing something obvious and simple and wise that i'm not, or whether they just don't have children like mine, demanding to a soul-draining sort of extent.
it feels like a combination of the 2.. surely i have a more difficult child than probably 95% of the population. but also it feels like surely i've made a million mistakes. i must have, or else it wouldn't be like this, right?

i shouted at my mum and made her really sad. she's seen very little of him recently because her family has been visiting. and missed out a few times because he's been so cranky. and when she's here with me present, he refuses to even look at her, i suppose in fear that she'll then take him away from me.