At Least we Tried.......

I posted a while ago about how difficult it was these days to deal with Noah. The terrible twos are here already and coupled with his intense personality, hyper-active tendencies, almost non-existant need for sleep and refusal to eat more than one whole meal most days, it's been rough. I posted about how every time we go out, whether it be something fun like a new park or something quick like an errand, it always includes five battles and ends with a tantrum, all of this usually after about 15 minutes. We just never seem to get a peaceful day, let alone hour. Noah's been into screaming lately, and hitting, biting and scratching, things that just aren't fun for us to be part of. I talked about how these problems have kept Jon and I from doing many things that we would love to do. We stay home more than we would like, we don't take vacations, don't meet up with friends and their kids too often. It's like, "head the tantrums off at the pass."

I posted all of this and then felt guilty about saying such things about my son. So, I took the post down. Mind you, it did begin with a paragraph full of great qualities that Noah has. I didn't want it to be a totaly negative post, so I was sure to talk about his wonderful points. He's a sweet little guy who amazes me, he cracks me up laughing all the time.... I just think between Noah's inherited smarts from his Dad and the hyper-activeness from his Mom, it's melded together to form a very intelligent baby and now toddler that wants to constantly go go go, explore and do everything on his own terms.

So, after taking down my post, Jon and I thought a bit more. We know that sometimes we really do need to attempt things with Noah. Sure, we go to parks daily, but for the most part avoid places that don't include wide open spaces and require more than ten minutes in a stroller and/or shopping cart. This morning though, we decided to try again and headed for The Birmingham Farmers' Market.

The market, it was fabulous! Jon and I loved it. Today we drove over, but next time, I think we'll bike, we just need to get a seat for Noah, tune up the bicycles, and we'll be set. I wish we lived closer to downtown than we do now, because you can walk in for a movie, a band, a bar, some dinner, great shopping, parks, books and the Farmers' market!

Today on the way to the market, we stopped at this great, fairly new educational book/toy store called Mind Candy. It was adorable inside, painted in candy colors, filled with the best kids books, neat educational toys, a tutoring room and a candy room! Any kid's dream. Noah got a little train engine which we hoped he would hold and play with in his stroller...um..that didn't work...

So we went to the market which was full of beautiful bunches of flowers, plants, fruit, vegetables, baked goods, fresh roasted coffees, soaps and so on. We came home with Rainier and Bing cherries, fresh, sweet corn, one really pretty head of purple and white garlic, a bar of vanilla almond soap, a tart cherry and a cinnamon apple muffin just baked and two great iced coffees. Sounds like fun, huh!?

Well, sort of. We didn't get to stay too long. Can you guess? Noah, he was acting up. After about four minutes he wanted to get out of the stroller, regardless of the new train, sippy cup full of yummy juice and a delicious muffin. In a moment of impaired judgement, I let him out, thinking Noah would this time, for some reason behave. Noah decided to take off and drag the stroller after him. We struggled to head him over to the live band which did entertain him on and off in one minute stints, after which he'd take off running. In the end, I told Jon to go off and shop and I chased Noah all over. He got what I wanted, but I wish that I could have been able to explore more of the market with him too. After a while, we had to call it quits and go home because Noah had run into one too many old women while angerly protesting our attemps to hold his hand. At one point just as we left he grabbed a tent pole and shook it violently. Yeah, that's when we left.

We felt sad and defeated. Wow, it's stressful! I know all of my friends have many stories of times with their children acting up when they go out, but why do we go through this every time? I know someday it won't be like this. I just can't wait to live our lives again, to visit museums and travel and go to the drug store without having to leave five minutes later with a toddler hitting me in the face.

I will end on two good points though. First, we ran into our wonderful friend Alan, as in Alan and Rebecca from our "Happily After the Chuppah" class last spring. They are an amazingly sweet, outgoing and creative couple that we met. Get this, not only do they happen to live just blocks away from us, they also moved back here from San Francisco! Pretty ironic huh? I wish we saw more of them. Jon and I need to keep in touch better. They're just really great people.

The other positive, I got Noah to stand on a chair for three minutes at the market's craft table for children and he made the most gorgeous paper bag puppet I have ever seen, I love her! Her name is "Organic Annie" and although Noah tried to chuck her into the river that ran along side the market, I think deep down he loves her too.