Oh, the drama…..

Anna has always been one with the drama. While Alex has/had his fair share of tantrums, Anna has always come out ahead in this game. Even as an infant, something small would require at least 10 minutes of screaming full force. Over the years, I have learned to ignore it and roll my eyes.

Yesterday was the one of the better tantrums. We went to the pool after nap to use up some of the afternoon hours, and Anna started screaming over blueberries. I brought a container of blueberries and strawberries to share with other kids there. When I opened the bowl, she insisted that she eat “whole fing.” I told her no. She says, “I eat whole fing, mommy.” Again, I tell her we’re going to share with the other children here. And that it’s nice to share. She stormed off about 5 feet away, and screamed at the top of her lungs and threw herself down. Luckily, she didn’t do the usual throw-her-head-back-on-the-ground thing since the poolside is concrete. Ouch, that would hurt. But she screamed and cried until my friend pulled out a cup and poured a few blueberries in the cup. She sobbed and whimpered for a bit, but seemed OK, until she spotted the crackers. Again, she insisted she have “whole fing” of the entire box of crackers. Same explanation, same tantrum.

A few minutes later after she was finally calmed down, she tripped and fell by the pool barely skinning her knee. She started again. Cried and cried and sobbed and wept about the scrape. I finally asked the lifeguard for a band aid. She immediately stopped the sobbing when the hunky Polish lifeguard asked to see her knee and tried to console her. He did laugh at the scrape and insisted she didn’t need a band aid, but she managed to convince him otherwise. After being bandaged by the nice man, we continued the drama of sobbing and complaining about how her leg hurt, her knee hurt, her foot hurt, etc. When she was playing, she was fine, but the minute she stopped for a second to relive the moment, the drama started all over again. After about 45 minutes of crying, we finally had to leave the pool and I think I even heard someone sigh a sigh of relief upon our exit of the area.