The Mean Boy at Toddler Time

I took Bean to our local library’s toddler time for the first time about two and a half weeks ago.  They hold it at 9:30am, so we didn’t get there until 9:45 since he only woke up at 9:15.  But I was determined to get him there that morning since I actually got up and showered before him for a change!  And he LOVES being around other kids and getting out and about, so I’m really trying to find more activities we can do, especially that are free or at least cheap.

We missed the first story, but got there just in time for a song, which the leader handed out “shaker eggs” for (maracas without handles), and Bean, of course, thought that was the greatest thing ever!  The leader was collecting the eggs, and Bean was being so good by going to put his away...until another boy grabbed it out of his hands and put it away himself.  At this point, I’m not sure if that’s the same “mean boy” that this post is really about, but, gee thanks kid.  My son was learning a lesson in helping and actually giving up something in his possession (something we struggle with now that we’ve hit toddlerhood).  She then read another story, which we struggled with…he didn’t want to sit still for the entire thing, but I couldn’t let him run around either.  After all the stories and a song, it’s craft time!  Sometimes he likes to at least color, other times he’d rather just get to playing with the toys they have there.  And enter the “mean boy”…

There’s an older boy, actually I think beyond the age group for this particular toddler time, who was there that day.  I could not believe some of his behavior.  He was there with his younger sister and grandmother, and the grandmother did nothing to try to correct his unacceptable behavior (in my opinion).  I’d say the boy doesn’t know how to share, even though he has a sibling, but he does apparently.  However, he seems to have “selective” sharing abilities.  He and another boy were playing with a HUGE bag of Mega Blocks.  Bean loves his legos!  So of course he sees the bag of legos and goes to retrieve one.  He did not take it out of one of the boys hands.  He did not even take it from the structure they were building.  He took one from the pile not currently being touched or used.  I saw nothing wrong with that.  I was even hoping the boys would let him join in their fun.  But no…  As soon as that kid saw Bean holding the lego, he grabbed it and ripped it out of Bean’s hands so hard that I was afraid he would hurt him!  Bean did not seem too phased by that (thankfully), but I wanted to cry for him!  It broke my heart to see someone be so mean to him…   I slowly led Bean away and said “I’m sorry baby, you’re apparently not allowed to play with them”, hoping the grandmother would hear me and reprimand that boy or at least tell him he needs to share with all the kids, since those blocks were not his own personal ones.  But no.  I tried to keep Bean away from the blocks as much as possible, but when the grandmother began to put them away and BEAN (not her grandson!) actually helped her, I thought he would finally get his chance at those blocks and that they would be out of there a lot quicker than they were.  But no.  The boys continued playing, the grandmother continued ignoring them, and the legos were still there.  So, when I saw Bean go to retrieve a car lego that was sitting away from the boys, unattended, unused, I let him take it (because my boy LOVES his cars – first word by the way!).  The mean boy went to take it from Bean, but I stepped in (since Grandma couldn’t be bothered to).  He reached for it and said they needed ALL the legos because they were building something huge (which they hadn’t gotten very far with, and Grandma was already trying to get the kids out of there), but since I was now holding it, he did not grab it out of my hands.  It took all I had to remain calm.  But I did.  And I said to the other boy, “But can we please share?”.  He began to protest, claiming they needed every single lego in existence, and again, I just said, “Can we please share?”.  At that point the mean boy backed down and then was out of the library a few minutes later (HUGE structure not even halfway completed, I might add).  But really?  I don’t feel I should be the one who has to teach other people’s children a lesson in sharing.  However, I did tried to that day.  At first I felt completely helpless for Bean.  I never encountered a situation like that before, and I had absolutely no idea how to approach it.  After seeing that the grandmother was doing nothing about it, I felt it was my turn to step in and stand up for my son.  Yes, I realize that one day I won’t be there to defend him.  I realize that he will have to look out for himself at times.  But at only 20 months old, I needed to do something.  Did I do the right thing?  Should I have done something differently?  It felt like the right thing.  And I really don’t know what I would have done differently. 

We went back to toddler time the next week, and I was kind of dreading “the mean boy”.  What would happen this week?  How would I react?  How would Bean react?  We lucked out.  The mean boy wasn’t there.  We missed toddler time this week, because someone was a sleepy head (thanks daylight savings for screwing up our wake up time…), but I will continue to take him back every week we possibly can go.  Especially because we did meet a very shy, nice little boy, a year older than Bean, who played with him the second week.  And the boy’s mom is nice and easy to talk with as well. 

Have you ever encountered a situation like this?  How did your child react?  How did you react? 

A scary day…

 

Hello again!  I know I said I wanted to post more, and that really hasn’t happened.  I’m not going to apologize.  I’m trying really hard to find a balance between life, my Scentsy business, blogging, cleaning, relaxing….EVERYTHING!  I finally bought a planner to try to organize my tasks for everything and make myself make time for each thing.  I’m slowly working on it…

I saw From Mrs. to Mama’s post today, and thought this would be a great opportunity to get a post in.  So, here it goes…what’s been on my mind lately.

This past Friday was a somewhat scary day.  Forgive the crudeness here, but I have been having irritation in my one armpit (that’s the crudeness…no other way to best describe that area though) off an on for about a month now.  I couldn’t see anything there, so I was just attributing it to skin irritation from shaving.  I had to buy a new brand/kind of razor around when this all started, so I thought maybe I just nicked myself, or was having sensitive skin issues from this new razor.  Well, on Thursday, it started to feel the worst it’s felt since it started.  I told Hubby about it and he said he would check it out for me if I wanted.  Well, that night was busy, I didn’t have him check it out, and Friday morning I woke up with it feeling even worse.  I asked him to check it out that morning, and when he felt around the sore area (which was so tender!), he said he felt a hard lump where I was hurting.  My first thought was, “oh, I have some sort of cyst…no big deal, probably just needs antibiotics or something”.  Hubby’s thoughts went in a different direction…a direction that had crossed my mind, but didn’t really sink in.  I was trying to think positive, minor.  If you don’t already know this, you have lymph nodes in that area of your body.  Then it hit me.  I have two aunts that were both diagnosed with breast cancer in the past year, and another person very dear to my heart and family who has battled cancer twice now in the last 3 years, first time being breast cancer that also came with tumors in her lymph node area.  I kept trying to tell myself that this had to just be some sort of infection or something, but truth be told, I was worried.  Worried enough, either way, that I made a call to the family doctor that morning and got myself an appointment for that afternoon.  If it was just an infection, it needed treatment now.  I could hardly move my arm without pain!  IF it was something more serious, we had to find out…

Appointment time rolled around, and we all headed to the doctor.  You better believe I wanted Hubby along just in case I got bad news, just in case there would be painful tests done, I needed support.  I was so nervous and anxious the whole morning, I broke down and cried at one point, and as we were driving there, I started to feel sick to my stomach from it all.  I was thinking about the dear family friend and what she has been through.  I was thinking about all the what if’s.  I was nervous about what might happen in the doctor’s office that day (would needles be involved, would he biopsy, would he tell me things I didn’t want to hear?).  We finally get there, I fill out the paperwork I need to fill out, and we wait.  And wait.  He’s a good doctor, but there’s always a wait.  Luckily I had a toddler along to distract me a little bit during our wait.

Finally at around 1:20/1:30pm (our appointment time was actually 12:45pm), the doctor comes into the room.  I tell him what’s been going on, describe how it was feeling, and that we made the appointment right away because Hubby discovered the lump and we got worried.  I was hoping for a more immediate answer of it just being a cyst, or maybe an infected lymph node.  First thing he asks is if I have done a self breast exam in the last month, or ever for that matter.  No.  I have not.  And also not the direction I was expecting him to go right away.  That made me more worried about what it might be.  Especially after informing him that I have a family history of breast cancer, among other cancers (skin and colon).  So, after instructing me on how to perform one, he goes ahead and checks out the lump.  Ouch!  He then explains that it is definitely a lymph node.  But apparently you have clusters of them in that area, and this particular one was pretty far towards my back for him to think it was related to the frontal area.  He did know about the razor and what I thought the irritation was from.  At that point, he said that he only ever had 1 case where the lymph node was sore and it turned out to be cancerous.  Almost 100% of the time, the lumps are not sore.  So, with the knowledge of the new razor, and the location of the VERY sore lump, he diagnosed it as just what I was hoping it was – an inflamed/infected lymph node, possibly from a cut from my razor that I didn’t know I had.  He prescribed antibiotics and moist heat compresses and said I should start to feel better by Monday.  If I was not feeling better by the end of the antibiotics and the lump was still there, then I have to call back and he will order photo imaging tests. 

Well, it’s Monday.  I have been taking the meds and (almost) diligently been applying moist heat compresses 3 times a day, as instructed.  I will say that I do feel less pain today than I did on Friday, but it still is pretty sore, and I still feel that lump there.  Even though the doctor told me not to lose sleep over it this past weekend, I’m still not “out of the woods”.  I keep trying to tell myself that I have 3.5 days worth of antibiotics to take yet, so I can’t get too anxious until they’re done.  But I would be lying if I said it’s not on my mind at least twice a day…

So, I’m waiting.  Watching.  Doing what I was told.  And we’ll just have to see what it’s like on Friday when I’m done with the antibiotics.  Hopefully it will be gone, and my worrying will have been for nothing.  But for now, I wait.

 

And as a side note, I wasn’t really going to write this particular post until I was done with the medicine, knew for sure what was going on, etc.  But after reading From Mrs. to Mama’s post today for this link up, about writing what’s on your mind, getting it out of your mind and on paper (or computer in this case!), I decided this would be the perfect time to make that time for me, for this post.  If no one else reads it, I wrote it for me.

Change is coming….hopefully.

I last posted, I don’t even know when, about wanting to blog more now that Bean is a little older and I was able to put the Blogger app on my phone.  We see how well that went! 

I really do want to blog more again.  I want to be able to make something of this space again.  But, I also think I need to revamp things a little.  I started this blog before we had Bean (who will still remain nameless and be called Bean, for now).  I titled it “Steph’s Creative Life” because it was meant to share my life in general, my homemade crafts, my photography, and anything else creative I could come up with.  However, since having Bean, I don’t get out to take photos, my beads are shut away in their container in a cabinet, all the crafts are out of sight.  With extra time that I have, I focus on my new Scentsy business (that’s been almost a year now since I signed up to be a consultant!).  Yeah, never got around to telling you all about that.  If you’re interested in Scentsy, you can check out my website – https://ssgherza.scentsy.us  (Enter shameless plug…)

So, I believe some change is necessary for this blog.  And I think changing things will make me more motivated to post more often as well.  Also, making time for it at least once a week and utilizing the little “Schedule Post” button will hopefully be of help.  I’m looking to do a new background (if you actually come to the blog page and don’t just read through Reader), and even a new title!

Here’s my issue – I don’t want to change my blog name suddenly and lose any readers I may still have left (thank you if you are still reading this and have stuck around, or if you are new and checking it out for the first time!).  Other Blogger peeps – is there a way to change the name of the blog and make it automatically change in everyone’s feeds/Reader, does it do that automatically on it’s own, or will I completely break and screw up everything??

Thanks for the input and keep your eyes open for some new things!!!