A Choking Baby and A Sweet Kid

I'm not sure why the "terrible twos" are so glorified when I'm certain that the age of "fours" is much, much worse in it's entirety. A parent's anger frustration at the craziness of toddler hood is, also, combined with a loving, sympathy of your little one's inability to communicate as well as they'd like. It's almost pitiful to see the disappointment in themselves when their babyness overshadows the big-boyness they desperately want to be sooo bad. But four (sigh). Four is the age where they know exactly what you want from them but they've decided they don't care anymore. Four is the age where it seems like they just want to argue for the sake of arguing.

I, often, feel like Aiden is really a teenager at heart. Complicated, emotional and intelligent - he's a joy to parent. Some days, he gets so frustrated, runs to his room and when we're really lucky, he likes to slam the door to show his disdain. Seriously, WTF?? I wasn't prepared for this kind of thing happening before the kid even entered Kindergarten.

Let me start by saying that I really do love the kid. Overall, I think he's wonderful and he's going to be a great man but it's getting there that might kill me.

The other night I was feeding Ali some Mandarin oranges (the soft kind that are canned) and she somehow negated to chomp down on this particular bite and instead, went straight for the swallow. Her little face glazed over a slight red and she was so still that I screamed for Jarod to rush over immediately. It felt like five minutes of this red-faced, not-breathing fiasco but in reality, I think it only lasted about four seconds.

Regardless, the whole ordeal scared the crap out of me. I actually had the morbid thought cross my mind, that, well, we made it to her first birthday and now she's going to die because of some dumb Mandarin oranges. It scared me just as much as it scared her and for a good twenty minutes she cried. I thought, maybe, it was stuck in her throat and making her uncomfortable so I tried to make her throw it up (didn't work) and I tried giving her some milk to drink it down (wouldn't take it). We just settled on holding her, rubbing her back and trying to calm her down.

Jarod and I sat on the floor with her; me calming Ali down and Jarod calming me down. The boys ran off to the toy room and within seconds, Aiden came out with his medical Doctor Kit, handed it to me and said, "Here, Mommy, use this!" My heart melted at his kindest. He, then, proceeded to climb up and grab Ali's blanky from her crib and snatched Sophie the Giraffe from Ali's bin of toys and gently gave them to her to ease her pain.

Jarod and I try really hard to be great parents. I know it's not a perfect science; it's such an unique relationship between one particular parent and one particular child. But sometimes, it's hard to feel like a good parent because we often don't get to see all the hard work we put into our children until a much later date.

But today, I got to see Jarod and I truly aren't so bad at this parenting gig and I feel really, really good about the kind of person our oldest baby is growing up to be.