Aidan is one hundred percent a carbon copy and paste of my husband, Monty. Worst group project, ever y’all! Thankfully, they’re both super cute, so I’ve made my peace with it! But they have more in common than just their good looks… they both get moody as all hell when they’re hungry.
With Monty, I suspect it’s a simple drop in blood sugar. I’m not one hundred percent sure if it’s the same for Aidan. At three, he’s easily the size of a five or six-year-old, and as such, he’s had a ton of growth spurts over the last couple of years. Seriously, we can’t actually keep up with the clothes buying! I bought him a huge box of winter clothing from Woolworths (which we love because they don’t have labels on the neckline) about a month ago… and I’m already having to give away tracksuit bottoms and rain jackets. It’s just crazy! When Aidan is on a growth spurt, his appetite increases exponentially! And because he’s nonverbal and can’t tell us he’s feeling extra hungry just now, we have to gauge his moods to know if he’s getting enough food and appropriate nutrition in.
When Aidan was a baby, if he began crying uncontrollably, the first thing I’d do is check his diaper. The next thing I’d do is make a milk formula bottle, because that normally sorted him out. If his crying persisted, I’d shift into detective-mode and start running through a checklist of triggers and possible physical discomforts or ailments. But oh boy, does this boy get hangry!
Wherever we go, we always pack a lunchbox of snacks. And Aidan can be extremely picky and uber selective even on a good day, so we usually have to pack a small amount of a lot of different types of snacks. Inevitably, he wants more of one thing than another, and we don’t have a ton of space or available hands to carry this moving feast, so when his preferred snack runs out, we move to distraction, redirection, and his go-bag of cars and other toys. Unfortunately, we also do have quite a bit of waste with this system of packing a smorgasbord every time we go on an outing, and this is mainly because Aidan won’t tolerate stale foods. They all have to be fresh out of the packet, or else he won’t eat them. So our wonderful domestic lady, whom we completely adore, always has a cache of leftover snacks to take home to her kids at the end of day spent on the move. Needless to say, we have more tuppaware, freezer clips, and ziplock baggies than almost anyone else we know does! And our dishwasher is full almost every single day!
I reckon every toddler gets unruly when they’re hungry. But most kiddos my boy’s age are able to verbalise that they are. For us, “hungry” is just one thing on a long list of possible reasons for a ratty mood and acting out. It’s just one other thing we have to figure out for ourselves, until our beautiful little man becomes more comfortable with using PECS, pointing at food items, and his ‘Let Me Talk’ app on his iPad. My suspicion though is that all men, no matter their age, are similar in this regard: They’re a handful and a half when they’re hangry!
