Lizzy had the pleasure of witnessing one of Carrie's best meltdowns to date yesterday afternoon. I was simultaneously amazed at the sheer anger that was coming out of the child and also somewhat embarassed because Lizzy wasn't the only one witnessing the meltdown - I think the entire neighborhood was out at that time and just kept staring at the little girl in the driveway who's mommy must be ripping her toenails out with a plier because really, that's the only thing that could cause such an uprising, right?
Nope. Apparently me picking up Anna can do that as well. Who knew?
I had just been thinking the other day how it seemed that Carrie's jealousy seemed pretty tame. Apparently I spoke too soon. When I got home yesterday she came running to me and I picked her up and said hi, gave her a big kiss, asked her how her day was, etc. She then wriggled out of my arms, moving on to the next thing on her agenda. When she did this I went over and said hi to Lizzy and grabbed up Anna who, by now, was about to blow her top because she had seen me and if I'm not immediately sitting down to feed her the instant I get home she flips her lid. That was the wrong thing to do I guess because Carrie came flying back over to me screaming at the top of her lungs "I WANT TO HOLD YOU MOMMY!!!! I DON'T WANT ANNA!!!!" After that no amount of talking, holding, cajoling was gonna work and she was in full scale meltdown mode for the next 15 minutes. No joke. Poor Lizzy was sort of speechless, but did ask me if there was anything she could do, to which I replied "I don't think there's anything anyone can do at this point - gotta just let this one run its course." She was eventually fine but made it very clear that she didn't like the idea of me paying any attention to Anna when I first get home.
While it's sort of funny to think about the tantrum now, it really does rip my heart out when she says stuff like that. It gives me a severe case of mommy guilt. I would love nothing more than to have loads of dedicated time for each girl but it just doesn't happen that way. And do I usually go right to Anna when I get home? Yes. That's probably because she does start freaking out when she sees me, and I'm sure Carrie's picked up on that and has thought "You think you can freak out and get Mom's attention little girl? Watch this." I try to make a conscious effort to do things just me & Carrie because I know it's hard for her to understand why a lot of Mommy's time is taken up with Anna now. It's just hard to balance everything, you know?
So go the trials of parenting two kids I guess....
