the parenting gig;

so I had the most intense week last week. I think the whole mimmyhood got the better of me, and instead of being the pretty chilled mom that I think I am, I became the fierce, bitter, angry mom that I hate myself to be. up til last week I swear I thought I had this whole mimmy thing in the palm of my hands. I love caring for my boys, I love being at home and keeping the fort together for my husband, I just love it. I feel satisfied with the things I do at the end of every day. I feel fulfilled. my boys are happy, my husbands happy ( id like to think that he is haha ) , they are well fed, the house is in an okay state. we good. 

I wake up everyday feeling like its a whole new adventure for us. like I'm free to do anything and everything with my boys whatever I feel like it. what to teach Hamza. or what should we train Umar to do, whats his milestone.

ok you get me.

anyway, up until last week, my darling firstborn Hamza has shown us a very different side of him. I didn't know what it meant. but it involved a lot of screaming, crying bloody murder, and just lots and lots of snapping. major tantrums. I remembered going to bed thinking, where have I gone wrong this time. is it the screen time? he has it on everyday, but on really short hours, and usually doesn't kick up a tantrum when I tell him its time to turn it off. which I found was pretty good of him.  so I took away screen time from him for a few days. just to break the habit. he asked for it so many times, but I distract him sometimes, and most times I just tell him that his Abah took the laptop to work so we can't watch anymore Thomas and Friends for now. ( the upside of not having a TV - they know when to stop asking and continues playing with other things )

but even with screen time on minimum, the whole screaming and snapping, was still happening. tantrums every now and then. we usually could negotiate with him when he's upset, but these days it gets a lot more worst. he goes to a point where he screams and asks for me ( when azhar's handling him), or ask for Azhar ( when I'm handling him ), and then just switches as he wishes. totally inconvenient at times as we also have Umar to care for. I felt like he was playing with our heads, and like he always only wanted his way out of things, and didnt seem to really want to listen to what we tell him. 

I felt like I was losing him. 

but I soldiered on through the week. I decided to become more stricter , more firmer. when he screamed his lungs out, I got pissed off and sometimes screamed back to him. I wanted to show him how tired I was, that I needed to get so many things done, and that his behaviour was not accepted. 

it was hard not to give him a little spank. Azhar doesn't believe in spanking. not until they are 7 years old. I grew up with a lot of it. haha. ( now you know where Hamza gets his tantrums from ), and I think spanking worked on me. I grew up listening to people tell me that sometimes kids just need the spanking to get them to listen to you. and to show them whose the boss. I did that with Hamza but found that he got even more worst. he wasn't afraid of the spanking on the bum, or the hand. he just kept on going.

as many times I tried to walk away, I couldn't stand the screaming and crying. most times he would wake Umar up from his nap and id end up having two crying babies screaming bloody murder in the house. I was just losing it. 

Azhar noticed his changes too and realised that he needed to step in to save Hamza from my anger and impatience haha. He has a lot more patience than I do ( of course he does, he's hardly home to care for them all the time haha ). With Azhar's method, of not joining into Hamza's chaos - Hamza would take longer to calm down. He acts a little more wilder in his tantrums because I also feel he knows Azhar is the good cop, and he gets to get away with his ways. 

I cried that night, telling Azhar maybe mimmyhood is not for me. Maybe I need to send him away and let another person care for him with better patience. My poor husband had to deal with my ugly cries and told me that he knows its not an easy phase. He reminded me of how young Hamza is. He's just 2, and he can't really understand his own feelings yet, which is causing all these meltdowns. The reason we forget how young he is is because of how well he speaks and replies to us. We think he understands everything but he doesn't. It made sense to me then.

One of Hamza's meltdowns, we were with friends and I think she saw how lost I was in handling the situation, she told me to just give in to Hamza and let another person handle Umar. She said it is a big change for Hamza having to share the attention with a new brother and sometimes he acts up to test me and to see whether I'm still his mimmy. That, broke my heart. I think that was exactly it. Because I realise how every time he goes into a meltdown he would cry n scream and wants me to carry him when I'm busy feeding Umar. I didn't want to budge thinking that it would create bad habit of wanting to be taken everytime I'm with his brother, but it wasn't a habit I was creating. it was trust that I was shattering with him instead by not attending to him.

From that moment, I looked and understood his meltdowns a little differently. I didn't see it as a spoilt brat behaviour but a cry for attention. I approached it in a whole different way too. No longer screaming back at him, or spanking him. I spoke to him, assured him that I understood what he was feeling, and that he didn't need to be scared of me and his feelings. I told him the feeling he was having was called anger, frustration, or upset..and I saw how he changed from there. 

Instead of screaming and kicking into a meltdown, he started verbalising his feelings. " Hamza tired.." Hamza scared.." " Hamza angry.." and it became so much better for the both of us. 

I also took him out just the two of us, without Umar last weekend, to do a bit of groceries, and I saw how his eyes just lit up when I told him that Abah and his Adik won't be following us. That it would be just him and I. He ran for the door and quickly said " Bye bye Abah! Bye bye Adik(brother) !!" 

He's grown so much now.  And I'm glad I spoke up to Azhar on my issues. We both had a very different upbringing in our lives, and while I still believe a little spanking does help, I'm glad that he has taught me that it isn't the answer to making our children listen to us better. We don't want them to grow up with feelings suppressed resulting in angry and abusive men. We want them to be able to learn to identify their tricky, difficult feelings - learn to manage them well without lashing it out on others.

we spent a great deal outdoors last weekend, and it was the best time ever. I realised then it wasn't the screen time that was taking my baby away. it was just me. so from now, I aim to mother better by keeping my batteries charged , and having his charged as well by having more one on ones! 

I look forward to more mimmy and hamza time in the future. and when Umar is a little older to understand, mimmy and Umar time too :)

now, will mimmy and Abah ever get our one on one time? haha I think I should kick up a tantrum to get that. hahaha