It's Just a Phase... According to My Mom

Some days I think three is such an adorable age. Mira's speech is improving by leaps and bounds so being able to hear her verbalize the thoughts that have been going on in her little head is simply amazing. One of my recent favorites is when Mark took her ice skating for a few hours (I must have been at work or he was watching her while I ran some errands or something because I wasn't there) and when I asked her later how it had gone, she pointed to her fingers, where some skin had been torn off. "Me ice skate, me got two owies. Me fell on me's butt." I know I should be correcting her grammar but dang it, it's just so cute to hear her mangle her pronouns like that! She continues to command the dogs, when they show the slightest interest in her food at the dinner table, to "No eat me's eat!" And if I'm going to eat she asks if "Mommy eat you's eat?" If she wants to jump on the trampoline she asks, "Me go uppy-down?" And lord help you if you try to take something away from her for any reason because she'll shout, "NO, it's ME'S!!"

And she has cute moments in public too. A couple months ago (can't believe I forgot to write about this when it happened) we took Mira to the movie theater to watch the new Muppets movie. Mira loves the Muppets, which she doesn't say correctly either but I just can't correct her when she exclaims excitedly, "Muh-dees!" I had put her into underwear and was hoping desperately that we wouldn't have an accident in public. About 20 minutes into the movie she yells out, "Mommy, me pee!" So I grab her and lead her down the stairs and across the theater out into the hall and into the restroom, where she goes pee in the potty. I got excited and congratulated her and got her hands washed and we go back into the theater. We're just starting to climb the stairs again when she yells, "Mommy, me pee more!" I gaped at her and pointed out that she'd just gone pee. But she insisted that she needed to go pee more, so I had nothing to do but turn around and take her all the way back to the restroom and sit her on the potty, hoping she wasn't doing this just to get the attention for it. But lo and behold, she went #2 in the potty! This was huge and I got really excited about this. So we wash hands again and head back into the theater, and as we're hurrying across the aisle to get to our seats, Mira announces loudly to the whole audience, "Daddy!! Me pooped!!" While Mark was definitely excited to hear about it I wasn't sure the rest of the people in the theater cared to hear about this but I chuckle about it now.

And sometimes when she's being a bit naughty it's easy to feel indulgent. Check out this masterpiece she drew when she had a Sharpie and 2 minutes when she was not under direct adult supervision.

From how she was describing it, I think this is a drawing of the ship that capsizes in the movie Frozen. I felt a bit bad that I had to scold her for drawing on the wall because she was so proud of herself. As for getting the drawing cleaned up, luckily we have a Magic Eraser, which really did magically erase the marker. I made her clean it up, but she thought cleaning up was even more fun than creating the mess in the first place. Any other mess this would be a good thing but in this case I think the lesson didn't make the correct impression. Especially since a couple of days later I discovered another masterpiece (this time in pencil at least) in the exact same spot.

This is a much more appropriate creative outlet for her.

So in those ways, this age is really fun. But in some other ways, this age is incredibly challenging and frustrating for me. Some days are good days and we have minimal temper tantrums from both of us. Some days are not so good and it seems like Mira is getting sent to time out every 5 minutes or so, where she will respond one of two ways. One way is she'll scream and cry until time is up, which is expected but still grates on my nerves. The second, and probably worse, way is she'll laugh gleefully. She'll sometimes stay in time out but usually she'll try coming out and when we set her back she'll laugh even harder. How do you discipline someone when they don't care what the consequences are?

It's not just the time outs that are difficult. If you bothered to read that article I mentioned in my last post, the gist of it is three-year-olds are assholes because they don't care. They do whatever they feel like doing, they are defiant and oppositional (not like when they were 2 and were just doing what they wanted because they didn't know better, they DO know better now but purposefully do the opposite of what is expected of them because they love how pissed off it makes their parents), they do everything possible to make us feel like we are the crappiest parents on the planet and we are failing miserably at this parenting job, and they just don't give a &%(#$&. I realize three-year-olds are not physiologically capable of rational thought of any sort, I realize they do not have the same sense of time and space that adults do, I realize they are testing their boundaries and trying to assert any little bit of control they can and all of this is developmentally normal - but trying to parent this behavior is hard. Especially with someone as spirited and stubborn as Mira. I know that in the long run it's a good thing that Mira is headstrong and willful and independent, but there are some days when all I can think about is locking myself in a closet with a bottle of wine and throwing in the towel because I am just done. I am exhausted with constantly standing my ground and battling a little person that has an impressive amount of conviction in her righteousness. After awhile it's tempting to just give in to her but I can't always do that. I don't choose to battle about what shoes she's going to wear outside, or whether she's required to eat all her dinner, for example. She can freeze or starve and hopefully that'll teach her for next time. The battles I do fight, though, are very very hard-won. Maybe I'm not supposed to view this as a battle but when I'm met with opposition for the smallest things, it's hard not to. And it doesn't help that the more she acts out, and the more exasperated I get, the more she seems to be enjoying herself. Good god are we in trouble.

If my mom is to be believed (and she's been right so far about this parenting business), this is all just a phase and sometime way too soon we'll realize this stage is over and we've moved on to the next one with its upsides and downsides. Every stage has its good parts and its challenging parts, but it's all just a phase.

A phase I have decided is one of the absolute WORST parts about parenting, hands-down, is potty-training. Just when I figured we were out of the woods with this we slide backwards. To be fair, Mira has been sick for about the last week and a half and is finally today back to mostly-normal so some regression would be normal, but it was so tempting to just stick her back in diapers. Even when she's having a good day using the potty it would still sometimes be easier to use diapers.

Putting Mira Back in Diapers - Pros:
1) Our schedules won't revolve around her bladder or movements. If we're running late or someplace where a restroom is not readily available - no biggie.
2) If she decides she has to go, I don't have to drop everything and immediately run with her like a swarm of killer bees is after us to the nearest restroom.
3) I wouldn't have to remind her every 45 minutes to go sit on the potty.
4) Since she doesn't want to do #3 without help, I wouldn't have to sit in the bathroom with her every 45 minutes.
5) Less laundry.
6) Less cleaning up messes.
7) Less trying to get a defiant three-year-old to help clean up said messes that she made.

Putting Mira Back in Diapers - Cons
1) Diapers are expensive and we're tight on money right now. (Although with the extra loads of laundry I've had to do lately this one is debatable, the finances might actually balance out.)
2) I would still have to be changing diapers. (But since I change diapers of all sizes at work all the time this one really doesn't bother me. I'll be changing diapers until I retire. So also a debatable con.)
3) Diapers, despite the best intentions of the diaper pail, stink up the bathroom. However, it's a bathroom.
4) Diapers clog up the landfills.

In conclusion, you can clearly see that putting Mira back in diapers would have the result of less stress for me. Maybe I should have waited until she turned 4 before attempting this business. But she's been doing a lot better the last few days - all her #2s have been in the potty (happy dance!) and she's been saying she has to pee before she actually starts to pee (another happy dance!). So as much as I would like to think we're almost at the point of her being able to independently go to the bathroom all the time I know better. We'll revisit that thought when she's 10.

You may have noted that I said Mira has been sick for about a week and half. I never ended up taking her in to get checked out so I don't know what she had but based on the volume of snot that was coming out of her head for days my best guess is she had RSV. Also backing up my assumption was the fact that she was worst on about day 4 of being sick (RSV peaks between days 3-5). One night she woke up choking and gagging on all the mucous in her throat (I almost took her in then but she got it out and was fine), and for several nights she was up at least a few times every night because she couldn't breathe and we had to suction her nose out. But she's finally better and just has an occasional cough and a bit of a runny nose. Mark got sick with the same thing a few days after Mira first got symptoms and somehow, knock on wood, I haven't had any symptoms. And I know I've been exposed because Mira coughed right in my face several times. But I guess after working for 6 years in a pediatric hospital I've got an immune system of steel now.

Well, enough griping. It's been a rough week but hopefully we're back on track now.

Mark is done with his CNA schooling. He's done all his classwork and clinicals, he's mailed in all his paperwork to the state, so now all we're waiting on is for the state to send him back vouchers for him to test, and for him to actually go in and take the state exam, and then he'll be official. And then hopefully he can get to work - which won't be a ton of help financially, to be honest, since CNAs get paid crap, but it'll be something. He's actually hoping to work in a rehab facility - as in, people fall and break something (typically elderly people), live in a facility for a few weeks to get literally and figuratively back on their feet, and go home. He did some clinical hours in one of those places and absolutely loved it - I'm a bit surprised because I was expecting him to want to work in a higher-acuity setting, but really, as far as CNA jobs go this would be about as good as it could get. So fingers crossed.

Mira's assessment skills are progressing nicely.

And here Mira demonstrates the other correct way to use a stethoscope.

And what would this blog be without some video of Mira singing along to something and then wanting to see herself on the recording?

In other news, we're going to be eating eggs for breakfast and lunch and dinner throughout the summer because this is what our average daily haul looks like:

Yep, that's a green egg! One of our Americaunas has figured out how to lay green eggs! We're excited about that. Our last green egg-layer was killed by our dog Archie so it's great to be getting more of them again. I told Mark when we first got the chickens that even though they are certainly very functional, they are very entertaining too. He was skeptical at first but he sees what I'm talking about now. Chickens are dumb. But that's why they're so funny.

The door to the coop fell off the hinges a few weeks ago and they were escaping out of the run anyway so we finally gave up and they're basically free-range chickens now. No wonder we're getting so many eggs. They might be dumb but they're smart enough to know that when the back door opens sometimes it means they'll get some scraps.

Although they're still not geniuses by any means. This one misunderstood the meaning of the phrase "grilled chicken."

One day Mark left his chainsaw out on the back porch sitting on a chair and that evening I happened to look out and saw one of the chickens trying to roost on the blade of the chainsaw.

I guess the moral of the story is you can find humor in some pretty unexpected places, and sometimes it's best to just focus on the simple things. Like playing in a puddle. All Mira needs to be happy is a puddle. Why can't we all be so easily amused? Maybe there's a lesson there.