Today I googled "How to deal with a grumpy toddler"

This past weekend we traveled to Chicago for my best friend's wedding (sounding kind of familiar, isn't it? Except my best friend is a girl, and I didn't try to destroy their relationship). I was a bridesmaid, and Ethan was the "ring bearer," which really meant that he wandered down the aisle until Noah picked him up and whisked him into the pew. It was quite a lovely do, and I'll talk about it presently once things here calm down a bit.

All this is to say that two evenings of air travel and being out of his routine for a weekend and I'm considering renaming my child Sir Screams-a-lot. Lucky for me, he takes his grumpiness out on yours truly.

For instance, last night in the grocery store. He shared a fruit snack with Noah. When I said, "Can Mommy have a fruit snack?" he proceeded to stuff the last three into his mouth, then he handed me the empty bag and shrugged, like "Oops, there's no more!" Also, when he gets grumpy, he gets hitty and throwey. As in he can't keep from hitting me or throwing something at me, or preferably hitting me with something he's thrown at me.

The thing is, I admit that Ethan was a super duper easy baby. I mean, he wasn't sleeping through the night at three weeks or anything, but he didn't fuss or cry often, he fell into a routine quite easily, and was sleeping through the night by about 4 months. The other thing about a super duper easy baby is that when he grows into a fairly normal-level-of-maintenance toddler, he seems really high maintenance. Hence my google search.

I found an article that listed a number of reasons why a toddler might be grumpy: fatigue, hunger, jealousy, etc., all of which seem very reasonable, especially since my main triggers for grumpiness are fatigue, hunger and jealousy. However, what I was hoping to find was a solution other than "try to determine which of those indefinable things is bothering your toddler, then fix it." Something more along the lines of, "Sit him down in front of a large bowl of candy, after eating which he'll fall into a blissful sleep and wake up loving you more than he ever has."

Although I didn't give him candy limitless amounts of candy, yesterday morning he woke up cheerful and cozy, and patted his crib mattress, indicating that he wanted me to come in and sit by him.

I will take what I can get.