One of those shitty, shitty days..

[Allyouneedispug]

Not expecting advice (though I'll gladly take it if offered) just need to vent.

DS has just turned 16 months and EVERYTHING is a battle. He's clearly super frustrated as I don't understand his babbled instructions/demands and, in his eyes, I'm simply not doing as he has clearly -in his mind anyway-expressed!
Won't eat unless in front of the TV (don't even get me started on that one, Thanks DH). Hunts for the iPad all day to watch his nursery rhyme videos. Screams when told no.
Throwing everything-food, toys, books. Downstairs neighbours must hate us.
The level of indecision is phenomenal. He wants to sit on your knee, no he doesn't, yes he does, he wants fruit, no, clearly he doesn't as it's been launched across the room. Now he wants to red that book, nope, that book, nope..,.
Tantrums over everything. Brushing teeth, putting coat on, not being allowed in the bin, not being allowed to terrorise next door's dog, not wanting postman pat, then wanting postman pat, then wanting wheels on the bus, then sobbing as he had "clearly" told me he wanted if you're happy and you know it (irony isn't lost on me)..
And the CONSTANT whinging noise-as if all this wasn't bad enough, he's providing a flipping soundtrack to it.
Today was a bad day.
At least he's asleep now. Touch wood.

Ah, it's a frustrating stage! It does get markedly better when their speech improves.

Argh, it is frustrating! It's also frustrating for them; they wanna explore and play with everything, even that glass vase you've had for years! But I let my son just trash things, if he wants to sit there and rip paper up, sit there and rip paper up. No point trying to keep tidy, it wont last long, ha!

Embrace the mess (you can tidy up when he's asleep)! Get paints out and stamp things on to the paper, it's fun. Give him a load of finger foods (chopped carrot, banana, cucumber etc) and he'll feel like he has a choice. Messy play things are good for distraction and interesting them. (sorry, giving you ideas, I know I was lost when my son was this age so tried to 'trash' things with him)
Brushing teeth was tough- try and make him giggle and quickly brush bits before he even knows. I literally had my son on the floor when I had to brush his teeth. Or maybe use two tooth brushes, one for him and one for you.
This goes by quickly. I didn't even notice when all the books were still on the shelf oneday!

It was 9 months of solid behaviour like this that drove me to skip merrily back to FT work :D It does get better, DS is 3 now and mostly a delight and I might (read might) try and drop a day of work when I go back after ML with DC2.

I've been back at work for the best part of a year-he's been a "challenging" baby so I was delighted to race back to work.
Things were starting to get better too-welcome to the crappy merry-go-round of child development!

I definitely remember age 1-2 being the worst stage. They start to have ideas that they should be able to do something, but they can't. And it's frustrating for everyone

Overused MN phrase alert, but it is a phase. Once they can start talking a bit and they are really confidently mobile, it starts to get easier.

Deep breaths. Smile grimly. Think about work