Hide your kittens.

This evening has been one of those times where I want to punch a whole liter of kittens. Bean has been a mouthy punk and it's disappointing because I've gone out of my way to be extra gooey and reinforce him positively all day.

You see, ever since Husband left for Asia, Bean has had an intense separation anxiety. He has improved slightly over the last two months, but he has days where he just suddenly decides to stick it to the man (a.k.a. me). What's interesting is when he gets in these funks, he also refuses to talk to Husband.

This episode began when Bean arrived home from school. He came in the door and decided he didn't want to do homework. He missed school yesterday due to a stomach bug over the weekend, so we had to get on top of it to be sure to catch up since his teacher thinks he needs more homework than my 16 year old brother. As he's writing the numbers two and seven over and over, he looks at me and says "The jerkface kid at school told me to call my friends names, so I missed recess!" I told him it wasn't cool to call people names, especially if jerkfaces said it was. I also told him to stop calling the jerkface a jerkface and if I heard he was being naughty again, I'd wash the naughty words out of his mouth with soap.

This threw him into hysterics. I'm talking, he slammed a couple drawers and the pantry door. As calmly as I could, I told him to knock it off... "or else!". He then screamed in a high pitched, demonic voice, "I DO WHAT I WANT!". This initially created three reactions in me simultaneously. The first was, of course, kitten punching. The second was the urge to laugh. The third was, "Crap. I need to stop saying that out loud."

The night continued with a bunch of his mouthy junk and a bunch of me trying to calm him in a way that helped him see that I understood why he was frustrated, but that it was still not okay that he was acting that way. Then Husband calls via FaceTime. Husband prefers that we turn off all the electronics in the joint when he calls because every single one of us has, at one time or another, gotten distracted and ignored what he was saying. So, as my phone rang, I turned off the show Bean was watching.

Bean throws himself on the ground, sticks his face in a pillow, screams and kicks his legs like a crazy person. I just ignored him and talked to Husband as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on. I told him after Cakes and I had gotten our chats in that if he didn't talk to his dad, I wouldn't turn the show on. He ran away and refused and then screamed in his demon voice again that I couldn't make him do anything and he wasn't scared of me. I promptly got off the phone with Husband and almost literally (but not literally) threw him in his bed. Once he was in his bed, he screamed, "IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!". Well, I'm not sure what exactly "it" is, but I don't care anymore tonight. I was glad that I got him in bed a half hour early so I could watch Cupcake Wars in peace.