Some terrible news...and the terrible two's

Happy Good Friday to you all,

This week has been a roller coaster ride for us here in the Burgess household, and it seems like there is a lot to get to today, so I’m jumping right in…

First and most importantly, we had some very sad news hit our family this week. Michaela’s grandmother Carol passed away on Thursday. We knew that she had been feeling under the weather over the past couple of weeks but we had no idea how serious it really was. We didn’t know the full extent of how sick she was until it was unfortunately too late for us to speak with her again before her passing. She was a wonderful lady that was always good for a smile and a laugh. I have only known her for these past 10 or so years that Michaela and I have been together, but she was truly a great person. When my Grandmother Pam passed away several years ago, I was completely distraught as we were very close. Carol had always reminded me of her and I always looked forward to seeing her as it reminded me of my encounters with my own Grandmother. Over time, I came to look at her as my Grandmother as well, and I must say that I truly cherished the time that I got to spend with her and will always remember her kindness and love of her family and friends.

With a mixed bag of sadness over her passing and the happiness that comes with getting to see the rest of our Yuma family, we will be heading to Arizona on Saturday morning. It is roughly a 10 hour drive, so we’re planning to hit the road at the ungodly hour of 2am, which should allow Landon an ample amount of time to sleep in the car. We’re hoping he’ll sleep until his normal wake up time of 7-8am, which would put us at least half way there. Having said this, it is far more likely that he never actually goes back to sleep once we get him into the car, and then proceeds to throw temper tantrums for the next 10 straight hours!

This leads me to my next topic of discussion….temper tantrums. Since there really isn’t an easy way to put this, I’m just going to be blunt….so far the “terrible” two’s is actually a freaking understatement…they’re more like the “some demon possessed my kid and I want to know where the hell my sweet child went!” two’s. Sure we still have the well-behaved, extremely smart, mild-mannered child about half the time (in fact yesterday when I picked him up from school his teacher made a point of telling me that we have a very polite little boy and we should be proud of how well we have been teaching him). However, the other half of the time, we have a child that screams “No!!!!” at the top of his voice if we ask him to do something, throws things across the room just to hear the noise, breaks expensive items, refuses to eat things he normally would scarf down just to see if he can get a reaction from us, and (most annoyingly in my opinion) will go into these weird whiny temper tantrums for no good reason! The one thing I will say is at least he seems to save all of this stuff up for when he is at home, as opposed to doing it at school or in other public places.

So I feel better now that I got that off of my chest. Don’t get me wrong, I love my son more than anything in the world (wife excluded), but this stage has not started off on the right foot as far as I’m concerned. I know that this too shall pass, and I’m bound and determined to make the best of it…so we’ll see how it goes.

As for other Landon-related news, I feel like we might have done some serious damage to his long-term mental health yesterday. At the very least, he’s going to run and hide under his bed every time he hears the electric hair clippers come out for the next few years. And with that little hint, I’m sure you can guess what we did yesterday. Yup, we attempted to cut his hair! I have recently embraced my new hair cut, and Michaela and I thought that we could save a few bucks by giving Landon a similar buzz cut look for the summer (his buddy Anthony has the same haircut and looks super cute). Anyhow, we set it up properly by putting him in his high chair, putting on his favorite movie Cars, and surrounding him with other distractions to keep him preoccupied. Needless to say, they only worked for about 5 minutes, which it turns out, was nowhere near long enough to cut his hair. He then proceeded to spend the next 15 minutes kicking, screaming, shaking his head, slapping the clippers away, and generally doing everything in his power to avoid getting any hair cut. His eventual meltdown led us to call it quits, with about 90% of the job done. So Landon then spent the next several hours walking around the house looking like Brittney Spears when she lost her marbles and shaved part of her head….it wasn’t pretty. We slowly but surely managed to sneak in a few additional cuts with the clippers and scissors to even it out, and we managed to get to a point where he doesn’t look completely insane any more. Let me just say, we learned our lesson and won’t be trying that again until he’s old enough to ask us for it….and I’m really glad that he’s a little boy that grows hair back very quickly!

This last picture is the "finished product"...and I have no idea what kind of weird velociraptor face he is making here...

Landon has also adopted a few new sayings lately, and I thought I’d list a few of my favorites…


“Ummmm…..now what?” (he likes to say “Ummm” whenever you ask him any question and he’s a big fan of saying “now what?” when he’s not sure what he wants to do)

“Go THAT way!” (he says this when we’re driving, walking around the neighborhood, or moving in any general direction…no matter which way we’re going, it’s always apparently the wrong direction according to Landon’s internal GPS)

“NO NO NO NO no no no no no” (he says this in a very condescending manner…it’s like he starts out angry and then realizes his tone and comes in calmer…he gets this from his mother)

And my favorite….

“I love you Daddy!” (I’m sure he says “I love you Mommy” as well, but this is the one that he says to me, and WTF, I’m the one writing this thing, right? The best one yet was after the whole hair fiasco yesterday when he still had some tears in his eyes and I felt so terrible…I went and sat next to him and gave him a hug and a kiss and said “I’m sorry buddy, I love you Landon”….and he looked at me for a second and said “I love you Daddy”…and yeah, my heart melted)

So I think I’ll leave it at that for today. We’ve got a pretty busy night ahead of us, as we’re planning to have Uncle Adam come over for dinner (along with Jessica, who is a friend of Michaela’s from work). Tonight’s dinner plans have unfortunately been cut a bit short however, as we’re planning to hit the bed extremely early since that 2am wakeup call will be tough enough as it is.

Have a Wonderful Easter and check back soon…I’m sure we’ll have some news to blog about next week.