Terrible Twos

...but he is almost four? I was sort of smug, we never had those infamous supermarket melt-downs with screaming fits over candy or wanting to rip open a sugar packet and spread the contents over the floor or such like. I thought we were such great parents that our son just didn't feel the need for major rebellion. Sure there was crying and complaining and trying to make deals with us, "Papa, let's make a deal, I get the ice-cream and the candy!" but no major defiance fits and majorly lost tempers etc. - At least until now.

I guess our little engineer is just a little later then the rest of them when it comes to emotional development stages or the uncertainty and break of routine while traveling brought it out - whatever it is we are in defiance central. "No" is the answer to everything, it's almost a reflex. I can catch him off-guard at times by asking him "Max, do you want a piece of chocolate" and he will say "NO!" then it takes 10 seconds for the meaning of it all to sink in and he will come back saying "Mama, I want a huge piece of chocolate". When I say "well, no Max, you just told me that you don't want any so you can't have any now" we have ourselves a melt-down. Of course I don't say that but give him the chocolate anyway as I only offer when he deserves a piece in the first place.

Another pet-peeve of his is walking on the “correct” side of the street. The correct side is always the one we walked on first, regardless of whether it is right or left. After that first time we absolutely have to walk on that side of the street again if not – meltdown. It is also not an option to go from the apartment to a point B, where we have already been before, by a different route than before. I mean, we can, of course but we are paying a price. If we go to the Duomo we have to go exactly the same way we went the first time on exactly the same side of the road. We have to also stop at all the construction sides and look at the warning signs and go through all of them – every single time. “This one means that one can’t throw trash off the scaffold, this one that one has to wear a harness, this one that safety shoes are required, …” Bores me to tears but if I don’t do it – you guessed it, we have a meltdown.

Those are the harmless examples, the ones that do not involve pretend shooting people or their beloved pets or lashing out at innocent strangers who want to comment on his blue eyes (the blond hair do not raise any eye-brows here but the blue eyes definitely do) or trying to hit us or making gestures that even with a lot of goodwill can only be considered extremly respectless. Not much one can do as a parent, or at least nothing much comes to my mind. If one tells him to insistently not behave that way he will do it all the more but on the other hand one can't just stand by and watch him behave like a spoiled brat with strangers. Typical case of damn if you do, damn if you don't.

Recently he had a complete screaming fit because he wanted to sit down, right here and now somewhere in the dirt on the street and not walk the 100 more meters to sit down on a bench at the piazza. Neither explaining or counting to three or promises of ice-cream at the piazza or the threat of not getting an ice-cream at the piazza nor a time-out did any good at all. He disolved into tears and a screaming fit right in front of a bakery, yelled and basically rolled around the ground. People were stopping to watch, the staff of the bakery came out to see who was beeing mistreated there, and the parents seriously lost their temper. He didn't get ice-cream that day and the three of us, Uli, Jutta and I (although I rarely eat ice-cream) treated ourselves to nice big cones full. Well I guess we are having terrible two times two.

Today we had a very Italian moment. We wanted to take the bus to the train station and then another bus to some monastery outside of Firenze. Sounded like a good thing to do on a rainy day (I am really sick of it now, really, really sick of it!). So we stand there and wait, and wait some more and wait some more when finally with about 10 minutes delay the bus shows up. We get in and after a short bit of a ride I hear people around me swearing under their breath along the lines of "Madonna!", "Merda", maybe even stronger terms that I didn't understand - turns out the bus driver had gotten lost. I dare say only in Italy (at least of all European countries) do bus drivers get lost because they are too busy talking on a cell phone to concentrate properly on the road.
The rest is quickly told. We got to the train station, hopped onto bus 31 and got shaken around in it for about 45 minutes. At that time Uli get's a little suspicious and asks a nice elderly lady - one of those who would surely know of any monasteries in greater Firenze - how much longer it will be. well, what can I say: we were on the wrong bus - the travel guide we had consulted and trusted didn't know sh.. (as we are on the matter of swearing anyway) about bus lines and so we were somewhere out there near Grassina or maybe not so near with no monastery anywhere. We got out and had ourselves a nice ride back in a completely stuffed bus because - needless to say - the bus back was delayed as well and lots of people were waiting at every station. So we drove around all morning in buses in the rain - it's still raining now, 5 hours later. Sigh!