The crying begins

Remember how I was bragging that my kids don't seem to ever cry?  Well that ship has sailed.

We seem to be entering a new phase.  We're either in or just coming out of a growth spurt and a whole set of mental lightbulbs have recently switched on.  There are new facial expressions, new understanding of toys and how things works, and now new reasons to get upset.

Oh, I don't know what those reasons are of course.  Just suddenly I'll have a crying toddler who's acting like they just got a major boo-boo.  But, there is no boo-boo.  I'll try cuddles and kisses, I'll try songs, I'll try shaking a favorite toy at them and nuthin.  Just crying, unhappiness.

Then they decide they're over it.  Nothing happened to fix whatever the problem was, some switch just flips and they go from "waaaaaahhhhhh" to "ga goo!"

Today I was lying on the couch while K was with us in the playroom (I don't know what hit me, I was just suddenly exhausted) and suddenly I would have a toddler in front of my face crying at me.  Then after a couple of minutes of making sure I properly appreciated how horrible their life is, they'd head off to go play with something.

I don't know what to do with this.  I have yet to find anything that reduces the amount of time is spent crying when one of these jags hits them.  I can't find a problem to solve, I can't hug the unhappy away, and I can't ignore them into being bored with being upset, and I can't seem to distract them into forgetting about it.  I've tried all of these and none of them help!

The good news is that K has this week off work so I've got a second pair of eyes and hands to try to figure this out, and if we can't, at least I have a witness that I'm farking TRYING so I don't feel so guilty when I think back on how much of the day the girls spent crying.

Didn't K just take a week off?  Why yes he did, but he's taking another one!  Well why on earth would he do that?  Let me tell you!

I'm having surgery on my ankle on Monday and asked him to take off Monday-Wednesday to give me a day or two to rest.  Apparently he's owed a day off for a holiday of some sort (he had to work, animals at the store still have to eat on holidays) and his boss just decided to schedule him with a solid week off.

Yup.  You know you're a stay at home twin mom when recovering from surgery sounds like a vacation.