for sale: andy

Tonight we experienced the full force of Hurricane Andy. The tantrum to end all tantrums. It was a thing to behold.

To condense the long, agonizing experience into a few paragraphs, we'll pick up about halfway through the screaming. (And I do mean screaming.)

Shawn had Andy in the shower, and Andy was shrieking bloody, furious murder. He was so enraged because....well, I don't know why he was so enraged. Everything we did seemed to make him angrier. Shawn couldn't get him to stand still for a soaping, or a shampooing. Andy was irate and wanted attention. Positive or negative, he didn't care. He just wanted a reaction. So we gave him none. Shawn was standing in the shower with a screaming, stamping 3-year-old and managed to remain totally calm. And it made Andy so furious that he began to hit Shawn as hard as he could, right in the bum. And on any other occasion we'd swiftly correct him, but this struck Shawn as so dang funny that he had to turn his back to Andy (thereby further exposing his posterior) and laugh into his hands while the little boy raged and railed and beat.

When he finally realized we were laughing hysterically at him he let out a scream (and I mean a scream), stamped his feet again, threw open the shower curtain and yelled, "I'M LEAVING!"

He stormed, naked and dripping, out of the shower, across the bathroom floor, and flung open the door.

"I'M GOING TO BED!!!"

At this point we almost were in hysterics, but we managed to calmly say, "Okay, Andy. Goodnight."

Then he whirled around, came flying back into the bathroom, slammed the bathroom door and shouted, "NOOOO! I AM NOT GOING TO BED! I'M SCARED! IT'S DARK!"