Our two little bundles of joy have very different ways of expressing tiredness. Fifi goes down the traditional route of getting grumpy and crying a bit. I can emphasise with that, maybe without quite so much of the crying. She often drags me off upstairs and points insistently at the bath (shes very prim and likes a bath before bedtime) when she’s had enough of the day. Which considering her current habit of getting up at around 5.20am is understandable.
The boy on the other hand has no such scruples. I’ve read or imagined that little children lack the capacity to know when they’re tired and that’s certain true for M’laddo. As he gets more and more tired, the proclamations of not being tired get louder, the hysterical laughter gets louder and more frequent and the acts of random violence get worse.
The night before last was a case in point. I had Fifi in the bath and M’laddo cantered up on a hobby horse and told me he needed a poo poo. Now that he’s toilet trained, this is a bit more important than it used to be. In the normal course of events he comes to the toilet after saying this but that night he galloped off into the distance on his horse, laughing all the while.
I finally managed to get him onto the loo, after wrestling his trousers and pants off, legs kicking madly all the time, and as soon as I did the worlds biggest bowel movement for an under 4 occurred. Sadly this record only lasted about a minute as his little sister decided to emulate it in the bath.
But I digress, tiredness eh? It’s expressed in entirely different ways and thats fascinating. All in all though, I think I prefer the grumpy crotchety approach our little girl has. It’s more understandable and easier to deal with, even if it does sometimes require the speedy evacuation of the bath.