So the past month (December) started off pretty good, Christmas was coming and the husband was at home and making a decent effort to be involved with E. This is the first Christmas that E experienced with an awareness of what presents mean and he was really happy and excited about it.
We went a little overboard in buying him presents, he has almost the entire collection of Kamen Rider accessories now, thanks to the enthusiastic husband. I'm not entirely blameless either as I watched the buying happen and did not put a stop to it. The two of them were just so happy that I did not have the heart to say no.
Then my Father-in-Law (FIL) came home with a bad cough. Which then spread to all of us and made our lives miserable for a good 2 weeks. E was sick enough that he was down for a day then recovered and was bouncing off the walls the next day complete with a ton of mucus and snot flying everywhere every time he coughed or sneezed.
So that started the trend of a few hours of TV in the morning which became TV in the morning and afternoon and E was turning into a TV zombie while the husband and I struggled to recover from whatever mutant virus my FIL brought home. One thing led to another and E was screaming and whining for TV morning, noon and night, his toys were left untouched and I could barely get him interested in his books when he loved being read to before. I even took him on play-dates with my friend, J's, kid whom E really enjoys spending time with and all he wanted to do was watch TV.
I was talking to J and basically whining about how I felt like E was changing and I couldn't keep up and was becoming a horrible angry mother for having to resort to threats like 'Mama's getting angry, go do what I told you to right now!' instead of keeping my cool and being reasonable and explaining things like I normally do.
J then reminded me that I've been through this before, I had totally forgot. Good thing I wrote it down in this blogpost and I could see that she was right. So again, E growing and changing is throwing me off and I need to grow and change with him.
So last week when all of us are back to 100% health and I had energy to spare I told E that the TV was on holiday and there will be no TV for now. The first day was the hardest, but I took him out running errands with me so there was little opportunity to stop and think about TV. We ended up at the Bedok library and he was excited again about borrowing new books so that gave me incentive to stay on the no TV path. J had also helped by keeping the TV switched off when we came by to visit that morning before the library.
It's been 4 days with no TV and the reasonable, sensitive and lovely kid that I know as E is almost back. It's been a gruelling 4 days for me as well because I've had to replace TV as E's playmate and it takes a lot of energy to keep up with a 3 year old but seeing his lovely personality returning makes it all worthwhile.
