Just now, I heard Peyton burst into tears in the hallway by Sam's door. He was yelling "I locked OUT! I locked out!!!" through his tears.
Well, I'm hardly surprised by that turn of events. Sam was in there cleaning her room, and even at four (almost five!) she certainly understands the purgatory that is trying to clean with a two-year-old around. He seems to intuitively know how to most efficiently destroy your efforts, even though he doesn't mean to.
I went over and picked him up, gave him a hug, and said "I see, you are locked out, aren't you?"
Just then, Sam's muffled voice yelled through the door "I told him he could come visit for a minute, but I was cleaning, and after he stayed a while, he was messing up stuff and wouldn't leave when his visit was over...so I had to do it!"
She thought she was in trouble, but I totally understand. We've talked to Sam before about how her room is her space and it's nice to play with her brother in there sometimes, but we understand that sometimes she also needs and wants her own space and that's okay. She also needs to respect Peyton's room as his own space. The problem is Peyton's room is upstairs and hers is right by the family room so no one seems to want to wander off to Siberia (if there's such a thing in a not-so-large-house) to play in his room. Besides, her room has all the good (read: easily choked on) toys he finds so irresistible.
I'm just feeling a little bad for my buddy-boo. It can't be easy to be barely two. You want to be in on everything. You think you are big enough to do everything, you talk a lot more than you could before, but you aren't big enough for most things and you can't communicate everything you'd like to--thus the tantrums. Plus, all the stuff you find to be the most fun, like throwing things, breaking things, shredding paper, is labeled "dangerous and destructive" by other people who clearly don't understand how satisfying loud crashes actually are!
Don't get me wrong, I know first-hand what a pill two-year-olds can be when you've got stuff to do. Yesterday I tried to iron with Peyton insisting on being underfoot and if that isn't a special form of psychological torture, I don't know what is!
But just for today, I guess, I'm feeling especially empathetic to my little guy who doesn't quite understand how little he is. Even though as I type this, he's sitting next to me picking all the sequins off Sam's homemade tambourine, and I know when Sam does finally emerge from her room, it will get ugly in here. Can't blame the kid for wanting to explore and dismantle his world, can you? If it were my tambourine, I'd probably feel differently, so at least I'm feeling empathy for Sam too.
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