The Child With a Death Wish and Misc. Update

I rejected the notion of Terrible Twos and never once used the term for Amelia at that age. I think it’s a terrible thing to project onto little kids when they’re just acting their age and figuring things out. At two, Amelia certainly required more and more parenting than she had since being a newborn. Constant work, I thought, but mostly just emotional meltdowns on her part. She was never the destructive, screaming, tantruming kid that you see in the grocery store.

And there’s three. Holy hell. My babychild has decided that she wants to die by the hands of her mother. I don’t want to (just can’t) get into all of the tantrums, fits, problems one by one. I’ll just give a brief rundown for the sake of record and brevity. And for the sake of not forcing myself to relive any of these events.

Probably the worst day that we’ve had in the longest of times was last week. During the course of the “Four Hour Nap Battle” event that has taken over our household, she pooped her pants. Not once. Not twice. THREE TIMES. In the course of a couple hours. Odd? Um, yeah. Especially if you consider that Amelia has never pooped her pants. Listen—she has NEVER pooped her pants. Not one single time. And she expressed complete and total disgust at pooping in diapers from a very early age. How do you react to that? When you’re 8+ months pregnant, needing a nap yourself and with a bionic sniffer that does not appreciate poop? I gave her the benefit of the doubt the first time, lost my patience a little the second time, and then? The THIRD time? Yeah. Lost my shit.  And when I asked her why (WHY WHY WHY?!) she was pooping her pants, she said “Because I love to” and it is only by the grace of Mother Earth herself that the child is still breathing. I put her in a diaper (for the first time in the day since maybe March of 2010) and sat on the couch and cried wondering what I was going to do if Amelia decided to start shitting herself a couple weeks before bringing a new baby into the house. All I could think was what in the world would I do if the Baby was here right now and screaming for milk or a change? And I am cleaning up shit out of my 3-year-old’s fingernails?! (Yeah, it was like THAT!)

Thankfully, she woke up the next morning and went right back to using the potty. Sparing her life appeared to have been a solid choice. . . This time.

In general, our biggest problems these days are general mischief. That the child doesn’t listen is among the worst. I swear, she’s always been so well behaved and easy to guide. Part of her being three has been about just abandoning rules and whatnots. Or better, hearing me say not to do something and then just doing it for the fun of rejecting her mother’s wishes. And maybe late to the game, she’s become that screaming child in the store/restaurant/restroom/anywhere. Usually after asking the same question 50 times and then finally melting into a screaming fit when the answer doesn’t change. So. Fun. And when it comes to nap? There is no faster route for me to completely lose my sanity than to try to get her to nap. And let me preface with this: I wouldn’t care if she napped if she could make it through the rest of the day. If she just gave up naps and was fine, then you can plan around that and work it into the day (although admittedly, I need the naps way more than ever right now too). However, when nap doesn’t work out (which is a solid 50% of the time), she is a total mess. MESS, I say. As in clumsy and getting hurt easily. And then the emotional meltdowns that eventually run together until she is just screaming and crying all the way through dinner, bath, and bed prep. Or crying the whole time getting dressed for swim lessons and then crying because we say she can’t go to swim lessons and THEN crying AT swim lessons and refusing to go in the pool—on the 4th day. ((shaking head)) So she’s beat by naptime and still refuses to sleep! And when I say refuses, I mean it directly. Amelia has always had to decide to sleep. It never happens to her or without her consent. Never. Happens. So when she wants to stay awake—even if she is exhausted—she stays awake. Awesome. And the whole ritual of my going into her room a million times and making threats, promises, bribes is just humiliating and aggravating.

And then there’s the constant drag on time. Trying to get her dressed and out the door is insane. You can get a shoe on and then she’s off dancing and singing out of the room for 10 minutes. You get the shirt on and she bolts out of her room get involved in some other activity, pantless. You get her to the car and she starts running circles around it while you stand at her door waiting for her to land long enough to throw her in her seat. All of this is only exacerbated that getting up and down is difficult for me and that running after her is just out of the question right now. This behavior is especially challenging for me because in a way, it’s just cute. She’s just a kid finding simple joys in every little thing. She doesn’t need to be in a hurry all the time. Or ever, as the case may be and lucky her! I agree that we should just let kids be kids and dance with one shoe on for as long as possible. BUT sometimes, you just need to get outthefuckingdoor. Sometimes, you don’t feel like sitting there and waiting for the OCD with ADD child to focus long enough to get her hair done because you have SOMEWHERE YOU NEED TO BE.

It really is lucky for all of us that she is ridiculously cute. If a porcupine has sharp quills, Amelia has that smile. Damn it. And the fact that she says, “mama? I love you” about 10 times a day is pretty life-saving too. And when I take her for a potty break in the late-night and she doesn’t even open her eyes, but asks “how’s the baby doing in there?” it definitely gives her some extra time on the planet.

Speaking of cute. Someone got a new do this weekend. I’ve been eyeing a cute little A-line cut for her for a while, but Justin was resistant. . . which of course is ridiculous since he NEVER does her hair! And then when it became more and more of a challenge to get her still enough to pull it off of her face, I got more insistent. THEN on Friday, Justin tried to brush her hair (so I could braid it, naturally), he discovered a huge, syrup-matted nest. “Time for a cut!” I said and that was it. Thankfully, we found a brand new place specializing in kids and CHEAP here in town. Like brand new. We were her first walk-in. Sweet! And half and hour later, we had this:

 

Soooo cute. And not a knot in sight. Even in the morning. No need for piggies or braids, just a little clip to keep it out of her face. We all LOVE it. It’s so nice to see her pretty little face all the time too. I made the bargain that it was just for summer . . . but we’ll see. . .

 

In other news, Amelia started swim lessons last week. Lord help us. She was all excited and has spent the last two summers in a pool almost every day. And then we get there. She refused to get in. They finally coaxed her in and she wouldn’t do anything. The next couple of days looked a bit better. She was making improvement, but not doing all of the things that the class was instructed to do. Then Thursday, the 4th day in a row and she absolutely refused to get in. Screaming, crying, etc. No luck. I didn’t know where to go from there. You don’t want to throw her in and make any fears completely worse, but why just stand there with her screaming? So we left. I don’t know if that is the best approach, but it was just a loss that day and she’d already been a mess for hours at that point (see above). Today was the first day of the second and last (thank goodness) day and again, she cried and clung to me. Thankfully, the teacher just walked over and scooped her up and carried her to the pool. She once again, had fun in the water, but didn’t do what the class was doing. Fancy that. Not paying attention. Too distracted to do what’s asked. hm. But otherwise, making some improvement and doing more things in our pool at home too. Though I could do without the death grip she uses on my legs with her pointy little toes and the scratches I get from her desperately clinging to my top.

This is the teacher trying to get her to lean back. Unsuccessfully. Notice that her posture and face are the same in every picture.

 

The best part is that when lessons are over, she tells me all about how brave she was and how she was swimming, etc. Today, when I asked her why she won’t put her face in the water like the other kids, she said, “I DID!” Oh. Right. So we’ll call what Amelia does “swimming.”