Well food seems to be working for us, so I'm going to cook his favorite meal. We're chicken/fish vegetarians around here, so I'm going to get a very expensive, giant piece of red meat for H to devour!
Still stumped on the gift, although he told me his favorite hard candies, so maybe that and some other snacks for his ski trip...
the mood was pleasant again. He continues to soften. The tension that has been thick as mud was mostly gone! Lots of smiles and laughter - the tone and the body language are just so much better. Feeling good. Of course, still scared to trust it.
H had a couple snaps, but snapped immediately back. That's progress. As Ive mentioned, he's mostly glued to some screen or another. As S's bedtime approached, I made the fatal mistake of mentioning "You may want to play with S because he will have to go to bed soon." implying "Get off your dang phone!" H exploded " THAT'S RUDE!!! YOU CAN APOLOGIZE ANYTIME NOW!!!" - in the rudest of possible voices.
ODP worked. I calmly walked away, soothed myself as I felt someone stabbed me with a sword. The hypocrisy in the message was unbelievable. But instead of arguing THAT point, I came back when calm, softly touched his arm and said, "I'm sorry, maybe I didn't understand what was going on." H seems to recover from this as if nothing happened while I'm still shaking inside....
