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Sunday, June 17, 2012

Tales of Threenager Angst and Woe

It is NO FREAKING JOKE when someone tells you – two is easy, JUST WAIT until your child turns 3, it’s a sort of hilarious, but a lot of crazy frustrating testing of patience, wine (or beer) tasting, and self control.

Gianna is 3 years and 2 months old. And while she is seriously adorable, funny, sweet and caring – she is also stubborn, independent, and full of attitude. And tears.

We have entered the stage (I am PRAYING it is just a stage) of crying over everything and nothing at the same time. And NO. And SCREAMING. And I will exert my attitude and my ability to push all of the buttons you didn’t even know you had.

Our main “issues” right now are:

  • Combating the No. She says NO. Or I’m NOT doin’ that. Or any version of a negative statement that you can think of.  We always try to redirect her statements to something positive, but typically the NO is accompanied by the stink eye and a string of either tears or whining or both.
  • Combating the blatant not listening.  It’s funny to me how someone so (seemingly) young can have fine tuned her talents of selective listening so well.  Gianna, pick up your toys. :: Gianna continues about whatever it is she is doing like not even the wind blew::  Gianna, do you want some chocolate? ::Gianna runs like the wind to wherever you are before you can finish the word chocolate::
  • Combating the general attitude.  She can turn on the attitude like a well seasoned sixteen year old girl. I don’t know how she does it. But I wish it would stop. At least for a few more years. We do redirect her “I can’t” statements and we do not budge on her having to use her manners when asking for something.  She likes to just demand things – that at least, has been decreasing because both Mike and I are pretty hard core on her having to say please/thank you/may I have etc.
  • Combating the “I’m scared”. This has been a recent development.  She is “scared” of everything. Especially the dark, apparently.  She used to be SUCH an easy kid to put to bed. The last week-ish? Has SUCKED HARD. She freaks out, doesn’t want to be in the dark, doesn’t want to be in her bed, anything she can think of to not go to sleep.  It is exhausting. And I hate ending the day on such a frustrating note.

But things aren’t all woe is me, I have a threenager.  She has a lot of threenage angst some days. “Why can’t I play wif some friends today?” “I fink you should call “livia’s mommy so she can spend the night” “I’m bored”, “I NEED (insert some ridiculous request here)” followed by “I just never get ANYTHING I want”. And my all time favorite phrase “I don’t like lunch. I don’t want ANY thing.  But I would like a snacky”  (she still eats like a junk-food obsessed bird, it is what is is, but still annoying as hell).

She is keeping us on our toes and our patience on edge, but she also keeps us laughing.  And I am so thankful for that! 6447944426C98CE667104DD21FA0EDBC

Also, I will note that apparently all I needed to do was write a post about how she didn’t want to take a crap in the toilet. Because seriously, that day, she started doing it and she has been rocking out her new found potty-independence since. So thanks for whatever potty-whispering magic you all poured into my comments that day!  It does make me really proud of her, and I know she is proud of herself.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think our THREEness must come in spurts, and when we're in a good run, I forget how badly the bad runs suck. I think we'll have about 2-3 weeks of adorableness and then one week of SUCK. (This must be a good week, because I have total rainbow and butterfly thoughts about him at the moment. ;)

B must have picked up "may I" at school, because that's the one manner that WE don't even use - usually I'd be a-ok with "can I". But this may I thing is hilarious because he sounds so proper when asking for something so preschooler. Like "May I have some fruit 'nacks?".

They're growing up SO fast, sigh.

Sunny said...

My oldest son was an angel (seriously an ANGEL!) until he reached 3.5 years old. Then he became so unbearable to live with that I alternated between wanting to ship him to Abu Dhabi and wanting to ship myself to Abu Dhabi. The good news is that when he hit 4, all of that passed and he is once again a complete angel, except on the rare occasion that he is overly tired or overly hungry. Praying we never see the likes of 3.5 from him again.

Scary for me, though, is that my twins are NOT angels at age 2 (although I love them dearly) and I am hoping that either 1) they are getting the difficult stage done early or 2) there will be a discount on plane tickets to Abu Dhabi, because baby, I'm headed there!

Either way, hang in there!!

Jules said...

I honestly don't get where the "terrible twos" come from, three has been by far a bigger frustration for us. Audrey proudly told us that grandma said she was a piece of work, and it's like, sweetie, if you only knew.

Paula Keller said...

Haha! That sounds like ours but more verbal. Great! We say "yes" when Lauren says "no", which is probably only making it worse. Oh, and the tone of her "no" is that of pure spite and authority. haha!

I am nervous about starting potty training. Oh, and I am home all summer so it's mostly my deal.

Sending you a virtual glass or wine or chocolate or whatever brings you happiness! Cheers!