Tantrums and meltdowns and tears, oh my!

To be fair, I can't really call what happened tonight a tantrum ... it was just too pitiful for that label since, to me, a tantrum involves a willful act or desire on the child's part. Maggie wasn't willful tonight, she was just tired and sad and more-than-slightly pathetic. Meltdown is more accurate, and the verb 'dissolve' comes to mind as well.

It all started after dinner, when my friend Donna came over and we went for a walk. We've both been wanting to start exercising again, and since she was the first to respond with an enthusiastic YES to my invitation to join the 2008 Walk to Cure Lupus, we decided to start "training." I left Maggie happy on the couch with Daddy, watching TV after her bath. Or so I thought.

I came home after the walk and went inside to get some water for the two of us, and returned to the front porch so Donna and I could finish the conversation we'd started. (As an aside, don't you just love those kinds of friends, the ones with whom you can have an hours-long conversation that twists and turns and goes every which way and is full of "Oh and that reminds me ..." and "Don't let me forget to tell you about ..."?)

Maggie wanted to be with us, but she wouldn't cooperate with my rules (don't climb on the railing, don't crawl on your stomach and get dirty, don't run around and get sweaty), so I sent her back inside. It was almost bedtime anyway. She was inside and I was outside, and I could hear her wails. When Donna left, I went inside and tried to soothe her. Bobby said she'd been crying ever since I left. And in typical 3-year-old fashion, the instant the option became available she wanted nothing to do with me . I got in the shower, which led to heavier crying.

Nothing would console her, and when I got out of the shower, she was sobbing into two boxes of band-aids, insisting to Bobby that yes we do have more Care Bear band-aids and that she neeeeeeeded three of them to cure the imaginary boo-boos on her finger. All of this said amongst the heaving, gasping, can't-catch-a-breath sobbing of her meltdown. I hoped my entry into the situation would calm her, but it had pretty much no effect. She sobbed as I asked her which book she wanted to read, she sobbed as I asked what happened to her fingers, she sobbed when I picked the wrong story (even though she'd told me to pick), she sobbed as she stumbled backward into her closet door, she sobbed as she finally climbed into my lap to read, then she sobbed when I said we couldn't read a second story.

I laid her in bed and snuggled next to her, and -- you guessed it -- she was OUT in 15 seconds. It sucks to be 3 and tired and Mommyless.

Donna and I have another walk planned tomorrow ...