Preschool, Gymnastics, Dinner and a Meltdown – Oh My!

I should have known better…

But sometimes I like to think my kid is the exception to the rule.  And truthfully, a lot of the time she is.

But not this time.

The first two weeks of school we skipped Averie’s gymnastics class in the evening.  It was selfish, I admit it.  I was tired, feeling run down and just plain didn’t feel like making the haul back into Cedar Rapids again after work.

Her class is on Tuesdays…  This means that on Tuesdays she:

1. Misses her afternoon nap.
2. Runs around and expends more energy than usual while at preschool.
3. Goes back to daycare and gets tossed back in my car within an hours time.
4. Spends and hour at gymnastics expending the last of whatever energy she might have.
5. Has to eat dinner late because we don’t get home from gymnastics until 6:30 PM or later.

Any normal person would have already taken a second to think “Gee, that’s probably a bit much for a 3 year old, don’t you think?”

Well… apparently that wasn’t my thought process.

Last week she had a melt-down in the parking lot of gymnastics about the pop machine.  Mind you, my kid doesn’t even really get to DRINK pop.  She’s had one 7-up in her life that I’m aware of out of a pop machine and maybe a total of 3 cups of some sort of fruit soda.  So this was an incredibly uncharacteristic meltdown.  Complete with tears and throwing herself on the pavement outside in front of all the other parents.  Fantastic.

Any normal parent would have realized at that moment that this was probably a bad idea.

Then there’s me.

We went back again this week.  I watched her gymnastics class from upstairs this time, so I was able to better watch her than I can from downstairs.  She looked TIRED.  I felt so bad for her that I went to the counter and switched her class times to a non-preschool day.

After class we made a pitstop at a friends house to pick up a loaf of delicious bread she made (YUMMY!)  Averie played with Carter for a while before we left.

Then she was HUNGRY.  I was going to grab something and take it home, but I looked at the clock and realized how late it was.  So I took her to Carlos O’Kelly’s.  At least there she’d be able to get chips while we waited for our food.

She decided she wanted a straw that made noises when you blew through it.  She even specifically asked the waitress for one.  I’m sure the look on my face was white as a ghost as I was bracing for what I thought would be an inevitable melt-down of epic proportions as the confused waitress explained to Averie that they don’t have those.  She actually took it surprisingly well.

Then everything was bizarrely calm.  It was almost like she’d aged 10 years for the meal…  there wasn’t even one hint of a meltdown the entire time.  we drew on her placemat and found all the letters in her name within the word search…

 

When dinner was over she packed all of her leftover food in a box herself.  She even told a group of older women on the way out “I packed up all my food in my box so I can have it for dinner tomorrow!  See?”  And they ‘awwed’ over how cute she was.

The drive home we only had one brief moment of her insisting she needed to kick my seat, which was quickly ended when I told her it would have consequences (and I didn’t even have to specify what those consequences would be).

Had I been mistaken?  Could she actually be perfectly fine and we didn’t need to switch gymnastics night?  Maybe she wasn’t as tired as she looked when I was watching from upstairs – maybe she always looks that way and I don’t see it since the view is restricted downstairs?  She really liked all the friends that were in her class, and I got along okay with the parents in the Tuesday session too…

Then we got home.  I don’t even know what triggered it, but next thing I knew she was standing at the refrigerator door crying because she wanted to have dinner at home. Full-fledged screaming and wailing.  But she didn’t want dinner.  Or lunch.  Or dessert. Or a drink.  Or anything for that matter…

She didn’t want anything.

Needless to say, she’s now in bed and I’m pretty sure I made the right call with switching her gymnastics to a new night!

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