Love and Like are NOT the same...

I love my child. I think I may have mentioned this once or twice. A day. For the last 17 months.

But I do not always like him. (It is possible I have mentioned this already, too. But I am allowed to repeat myself! So there!)

He has lately been a sinking ship of emotional insanity. And it's not only quite ridiculous, it's making our time together much less enjoyable.

I refill his sippy cup? He sobs hysterically. I put on his socks? He weeps. I take away a knife he managed to grab off the counter while I was chopping and he was on his tippy toes? He throws himself on the floor and wails. I shut the door to the bathroom? He beats it with his tiny fat fists and cries his eyes out. He drops something soft and not at all painful on his foot? He sheds massive crocodile tears and moans.

EVERYthing is making him cry. Or yell. Or both. Usually, lately, it has been both. He is becoming prone to fits of hysteria, and I don't understand it at all. He can't have PMS, he's a boy. And he can't be depressed, he's never even been in love. He hasn't lost a job, no one has died, and his best friend most certainly has not been spreading awful rumors about him at school.

So what gives?!

It's too early for the terrible twos. He's too young for hormones. And I am too tired to accept that this is the way it's just going to be forever.

Sigh.

I have to remind myself that he's little, and being little is frustrating and hard, especially when you don't know enough words to ask for what you want or understand why you can't have it. Imagine being just over 2 feet tall in a foreign country and speaking 4 words of the language. Yuck, right?

Right.

So I love him, and I feel bad for him, but I am also not enjoying him right now.