Every Thursday night, my parents come over for dinner and to watch Annalyn while I go to choir practice. For the first
few months year and a half, they brought dinner with them.
But this fall, I decided that I can probably manage to make dinner one night a week, rather than my parents planning and cooking ahead, packing the meal and bringing it from their house 30 minutes away. Seriously.
So last week, I decided to make meatloaf,
cheesy potatoes and green beans. I’d made the potatoes over the weekend, so all I had to do was defrost them during the day and pop them in the oven as soon as I got home. And how hard is it to dump a can of green beans on the stove and put a meatloaf together?
Harder than you’d think.
As we pulled into the driveway that evening, I told Annalyn that when we got inside, I’d have to work in the kitchen. (Normally, I spend my precious two hours with her just playing, leaving the chores for later . . . whenever
that may be.)
She was fine for a little while, but when I was standing at the counter dumping breadcrumbs and ketchup into the bowl for the meatloaf, Annalyn decided she’d had enough of being neglected.
My smarty pants little girl got into the pantry and pulled out a packet of muffin mix, brought it over to me and said, “Muffins!”
I said, “Sure, baby, we can make muffins. After I finish the meatloaf.”
Well, my goodness. You would have thought I said, “No, sweetheart, you cannot have muffins. As a matter of fact, you can never eat bread again. And actually, I don’t think you can have dinner, either.”
Because her reaction? Pure meltdown.
“Noooo! Muffin! Muffin! No wait! Muffin!!!”This went on for a good 10-15 minutes. I kept telling her, calmly, that we could make the muffins, but she needed to be patient. I let her keep howling, because a) I needed to get the meatloaf cooking and b) I was kind of hoping my parents would arrive and catch her mid-fit.
And, oh, they did. After informing us (because I’m quite sure Annalyn cared as much as I did) that they could hear her racket
in their car on the street, they distracted her and cheered her up. And gave her a bath.
So all was well then. But the good part of an hour leading up to their arrival? Not. Fun. And all over a little less attention than normal and MUFFINS.
Really?
I mean,
I like my carbs, but that’s a little crazy!
It should not have surprised me when she had a meltdown the following night over wanting to push her stroller in the crowd, rather than ride in it. Clearly, logic is not at work here.
Even more bizarre than the Muffin Meltdown is the Britches Blow-up.
We cannot figure out where Annalyn has learned to call her pants “britches,” but she is a little sponge these days. So “britches” it is.
Of course, she’s not yet two years old, so her pronunciation of the letter “r” leaves something to be desired.
Especially when she’s insisting on wearing a different pair of pants by screaming,
“Britches! Britches! Britches me! Britches!!!!”Yep. That’s right. Just read that sentence
without the “r” in “britches.”
This all reminds me of the time Mark and I went to marriage counseling. Though the counselor
wisely kindly noted that Mark’s actions were causing many of our problems, he also told me that my reactions were part of the issue, too. I’ll never forget the valuable advice he gave me:
Keep your reaction in check with the level of the offense.I wonder if that therapist sees toddlers?
Last year was the first year I 
