Day 972 - **Insert Screaming Sounds Here**

I find that a good scream can be rather freeing. At the risk of sounding like a B-movie horror villian, will you scream with me?

Wow, that felt good, right? However, I think another one is necessary in order to truly exorcise the frustrations of this day. Ready? One, Two, Three...

Scream Shia, scream!

Now, I know I'm ready to write about today and all it took was me taking a few cues from Ethan. Who would have thought?

I feel like it goes without saying at this point that today was somewhat of a struggle. While the occasional rough day comes with the territory for being a stay-at-home dad, today was something else. Part of the reason can definitely be traced back to last night as for the first time in a couple of months, our family returned to life group. Now, I realize that's not a huge thing but when you consider that it resulted in Ellie and Ethan going to bed almost two full hours later than normal, it all starts to make sense.

Actually, on second thought, the rough patch began last night as both kids suffered through separate screaming sessions as we attempted to put them to bed. Neither was particularly fun but Ellie's was definitely worse if you're keeping score.

Today, while I started the day filled with hope anew, it became obvious pretty quickly that Ethan did not share my zeal for the day. Within ten minutes of us beginning our day, he was laying on the floor, kicking and screaming all while being totally inconsolable. The weird thing is that nothing we did really could help him. He finally just snapped out of it on his own.

From that point, I realized that rather than planning the whole day out, I was going to have to be subject to whatever was going to make Ethan and Ellie happy at any given moment. The first example of that would be Ethan taking a morning nap. Now, this wasn't just a 30-minute power nap. Instead, it was a full-fledged hour and a half snooze session. While he awoke from said nap in a decent mood, it definitely impacted the rest of his day. For starters, his afternoon nap would only last a brief while resulting in a long afternoon for the little guy.

Once both kids were awake, we loaded up and went searching for a park. I say "searching" because things didn't go quite according to plan as the first park we stopped at had a bunch of broken equipment. From there, we loaded up and headed to Smithville for a fun afternoon of park time.

Once we arrived home, that's when things got really weird. As soon as Ethan saw Bethany, his little mind seemed to break. For starters, he began screaming at her to go back to work. When that didn't work, his screaming degenerated into a full-fledged tantrum complete with him stripping. Seriously, at one point, Ethan would spend a good 15 minutes laying on the kitchen floor with no pants or diaper, screaming all the while.

Finally after nearly an hour of screaming, Ethan decided there were two things that would calm him. First, he desired some carrots to eat. Second, and more importantly, he wanted to listen to 'Pat Mahomes, Take Me Home' yet again. After all, who can resist the healing properties of Pat Mahomes to fix all that ails us? Am I right? #DaddyWrite