Breathe... and let go

I've been doing that a lot lately. Marcus has really been showing the terrible two's and it's extremely frustrating. He was showing it a little bit before Jamesen showed up, but since Jamie-boy came he's gotten so much worse! We usually tell him not to do something and then say it a bit louder , threaten to count from three and then count backwards from three if he's doing something something wrong. Normally he would stop right as we said one. If he didn't stop we would get up and put him in time out [sit him on our laps while holding his arms to his chest and his legs in our legs]. He'd get mad enough not to do it again.

Lately... lately he's realized that if we're holding Jamesen, we're less likely to get up and get him after counting backwards from three. I'm usually nursing or J's asleep on Sabe so we don't want to move him. Oh Marcus knows! He'll stand there doing whatever it is we don't want him to do and look back at us with this half grin that says "You're not gonna come get me, I know you aren't".

For a little bit there I would hit Marcus back if he hit us or I would spank him if he I got to the end of 3 but lately I've had to stop because I get so angry that I hit waaaayyy too hard. I've been trying not to hit him out of anger because I only ever hit him too hard and that's not the type of discipline I want to use with him. It's frustrating though when you just get him in trouble for something and he goes right back to doing it. Just remember it's the terrible two's stage, he's going to test your limits and breaaaaatheeeeeeeee.

In other news, Jamesen is lactose intolerant like Marcus was. I'm pretty sure he's got it worse though because Marcus never screamed like this when I ate dairy. He was just fussy and gassy. Jamesen is gassy and screams. I wanted to test out the dairy thing so I didn't eat dairy for a week and then I ate pizza. Yeah, no more dairy for me. Jamesen was crying and fussy and screaming and inconsolable and gassy. Poor kid. I was beating myself up about it yesterday because it was my fault he was so cranky.

He's holding his head up really well though and starting to focus on my face for long periods of time. He even gave me his first smile in response to me the other day. Sadly he's not a smiler like Marcus was. Marcus was smiling in response to me at day 3 and by 4 weeks was grinning HUGE. Jamesen smiled the most beautiful smile once. But Sabe was standing right there and saw it too! He's missed all of Marcus' firsts pretty much that was awesome to have him catch the first of Jamesen's.

Ok, Jamie-boy is getting fussy. Thanks for reading :)