I know many of you will snort at how minor this all was but ds (2.9) is normally quite good so I am feeling quite out of my depth.
He was really really tired - had nightmares that kept him awake in the night and then for unknown reasons he woke shortly after 5 instead of nearly 7. So not a good start. (And mama bloody knackered too.)
He spent the entire morning running away from 9m dd who was determined to play with him or at least with whatever he was playing with. Think I read somewhere that 2.9's can't share - well he's certainly struggling - btw what ARE you supposed to do then? Can't have him shrieking and snatching all day!
Then around 8 I caught him swinging a kick towards dd's head. When I told him off he laughed, so I put him in time-out. He's only had that about 3x before because, as I said, usually he's pretty good. He's been ok with it before but today he wouldn't stay and with me putting him repeatedly back in corner dd decided this was a great game and she'd better join in. Realising I couldn't win this I took ds off to bed.
He was distraught - when I'd got up to ready bedroom I think he thought he'd won (both making too much noise for me to bother explaining anything) so many tears. When he was ready to listen I looked him hard in eye and said, "I said no kicking dd and I mean it. Never. And when I said sit in time out, I meant that too. If you can't do those things I think you must be too tired and you need a nap."
Took dd. Checked him 5mins later, ignored attempt at chat, 5 more mins he was out. By 9:30am.
Was that even vaguely on the right track? Am I doing something wrong with time-out? Or do we just expect everything to go completely haywire when they're that tired?