Three

Goodness - I think this is one of the longest breaks I've had from blogging! I've been far to busy being busy. Or lazy. Maybe that too. Well to be honest, I've had study to get through and avoiding university text readings isn't going to do itself.

But my latest subject has wrapped up and I've had a week off, and I found myself wondering what the hell to write about.

This morning I realised that we need to have a discussion about the resident 4 year old.

To put it into perspective - with my boys, the Terrible Twos was a a very misleading term. Now, I don't want to detract from the fact that most of them are actually really terrible. Absolutely awful, to be honest. But they were also insanely cute. What was misleading was that the term seems to indicate that it begins and ends in the second year of life. No one felt the need to warn me that the Terrible Twos are a gateway to The Three Year Old, a far more wily and chaotic being. Yet, by the time the boys reached four, they were much easier in some ways. So we decided that was the rule of thumb. Terrible Twos. Even more Terrible Threes. Then the Fours would provide us with some relief.

Enter Missy.

Here she is, the little angel. The wind is blowing her hair into her face, so she's trying to punch it away.

We are slowly creeping towards the magical Four mark, but there is no relief in sight. She is a creature of determination, stubbornness, confidence and noise. That's actually what I wrote on her Kindy application for next year. They already know this, though, so it won't be a surprise. 

I have been relying on my default strategy to deal with it. Basically it's time out for Mum to calm down, where the Little Beast is put in her room. From there Little Beast screams continuously into the hallway, "CAAAAN IIIIIII COME OUT NOWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!! IIIIII WANT TO COOOOOME OUT NOOOOOOOOWWWWW!!!!". Repetitively. Until we are certain that she's forgotten about the-thing-that-was-so-important-beforehand-that-was-causing-the-arguing-screeching-whining-tantrums, and she comes out to launch a fresh assault on us. Parents of the year. Thank you.

What is happening more and more is that occasionally one of us will naively try to convince her to stop shouting and do her time in peace (HA!). The response I get is always more arguing. The response Hubby gets is far more hilarious. His attempts to persuade her to stop hollering are always met with an "I'M NOT TALKING TO YOU, DAD!"

We were reminded last night, that while it's quite funny now, it won't be when she's 13. Or maybe it will. I don't know. All I know is that for all my book reading on parenting strategies, trawling through parenting forums to work out if I'm raising a budding psychopath and how to deal with psychotic tantrums, nothing prepared me for this creature. So we're winging it. And probably badly too, but when I look back at the memories of the kids driving me completely bonkers it usually makes me laugh. What made me blubber disparingly through a block of chocolate, now makes me giggle. 

So I have hope that while The Three Year Old phase does not seem to be going anywhere, or winding down in any way, and while we both might be regularly reaching the end of our collective tether, we will probably look back at this manic time with a great deal of fondness. 

That's the theory, anyway. Watch this space ;)

x