Upset Balance

Yesterday and most of today, Musical Daddy was away at a barbershop contest. And The Boy was just not himself.

It's odd, because we'll have periods of time where one or the other of us will be away for awhile during the day, working and doing lessons or whatever else, and things will be fine. But he just KNOWS somehow that Daddy is not as close by as he normally is, and something isn't right with the world.

Grandma and Grandpa stepped it up, as they always do, and their help is so valuable to us, but it wasn't the same for The Boy. He needs Daddy the most.

Everything was a battle with The Boy, particularly today. Everything involved him hitting us or trying to hit us. His fuse was exceptionally short, particularly when dealing with his brother. Fits all around. I did put him in "time out" of sorts, which I usually don't do, just for the purpose of getting him away from us, because he was really trying to hurt Meatball in the interest of playing a different computer game than the one that Meatball wanted to play with Grandma. I also declared no computer games for The Boy for the rest of the day. Not that it made much of a difference to him overall, but that way there was no cause for him to fight with Meatball about it. Frequently, Meatball does things to provoke The Boy. He's close in size and thinks he's big, so he pesters The Boy and eventually, The Boy fights back. This time, Meatball was just trying to play.

It's a bit stressful around here because we're trying to get things ready for Passover, so the house will be all set to go when we get back from our trip. Also, my 14-year-old cousin will be coming back here with us (well, with my parents and sister) for the remainder of her spring break. Tomorrow and Monday, we go out to eat, because there's pretty much nothing left in the house.