Pat's first teeth and a hell of a day
What a day it has been. I'm exhausted.
This morning Aidan had his weekly gym class. The term he has moved up from the babies (1.25-2.5 years) to the tots class (2.5-3.5 years). I mostly moved him up because he's bigger than the rest of the babies and a bit rough. But the tots program is a lot more structured, which is great for most of the children but horrible for Aidan. Wait in line? Follow the leader? You're kidding, right, Mummy? I've been concerned for the last couple of weeks, but this week Aidan was a terror. He was running out of the gym area, messing up the activities for other kids, pushing into the circuit and then leaving without completing it, but most of all needing his Mummy to help him stay focussed. And Mummy was feeding Patrick, who is old enough not to just sleep through the classes any more. It's just getting too hard, and I hate dumping Patrick on the gym mats to chase Aidan, and trying to force Aidan to do activities when he would rather just climb up and jump off the vault and balance beams. So I've unenrolled him. I'll have to find a new activity. It's a shame, because he loves playing on the equipment, but he's a disruption to the class and I'm always so relieved when the class is over.
After gym class I headed to Forest Lake to look at display homes. We have our eyes on a block and need to make sure we can build a house on it to suit the covenant and our needs within budget. Aidan was a menace, and in the end I only got through half the village. He tore up brochures, he ran away (repeatedly), and he threw tantrums. It was really stressful, and all-in-all it's probably a bad idea for me to do display houses without a second adult along to dedicate some attention to the children while I talk to salespeople.
It's no surprise that Aidan was reasonably well-behaved when I took him to a play centre. I even managed to avoid a big tantrum when we left, so I thought the worst was over. Then I got to the grocery store. I grabbed a trolley which didn't have a functional toddler seatbelt. That's never been a problem before so I didn't worry about it. Within 15 minutes Aidan was climbing around in the seat, sitting sideways or twisted around. I turned my back for a moment and looked back to see his feet hitting the floor as he decided to climb out. Instead of running he decided to push the trolley for me, so I let him stay out since he obviously wanted to walk around for a bit. As soon as we got to the end of an aisle he charged off through the shop, so I had to chase him down. He went back in the trolley, and whined at me for the rest of the shopping trip. He fell asleep on the way to the train station to pick up Michael from work, and is still asleep. My worry is that he hasn't had a full meal since breakfast, so I expect him to want dinner somewhere around midnight.
I've managed to over-book Saturday. Going to have to reschedule something I think. There's a home building expo this weekend that I want to get to as well, no idea how I'll manage that one.