I’d forgotten how completely, totally annoying three year old children can be. Especially when they’re your own children.
It’s been two years since my son was preschool-aged, all temper tantrums and dramatics and stamping feet and grumpy faces.
Of course, the Bump, my darling little fairy girl, didn’t let me keep that voluntary regressive amnesiac state for long. She is three years and five months old. (Good grief… three and a half. How and when did that happen, where has my tiny baby gone…?) and is absolutely making the most of her small-child-as-terrorist status.
Cute. Don’t let that fool you.
The bump is up, intermittently, at all hours of the night… simply because she can be. Her temper tantrums are still fabulously dramatic; and and she thinks nothing of having a full meltdown at any given time or place. Because of course, three year old’s are not governed by social expectations, nor such ridiculous concepts as time– they are, completely, the center of their own– and, in their own humble opinion, everyone else’s– universes.
To exasperate the general difficulty of just-being-that-age, the Bump is currently at that awesome stage where she no long really needs to take a nap during the day. But if she doesn’t sleep at lunchtime, she’s likely to pass out on the lounge somewhere between four and five pm, sleeps like a log for an hour or so; then refuse to go back to sleep until almost eleven o’clock at night.
Attempting to break the cycle in any way– namely, by withholding her late afternoon siesta– is met with resistance in the form of a screaming, possessed banshee child. Who is so over-tired that she still may not go to sleep again until many long, torturous hours after the sun goes down.
And anyway, as previously mentioned– just because she’s in bed does not mean she’ll stay there. Some nights I’m lucky if I get even two hours between shrill demands for milk or juice or more (godforsaken) dummies or because there are goddamn monsters in her room or because she wants a cuddle or something.
She is a chatterbox, my gorgeous little girl-child, all incandescent words tumbling over one another. And, like all children, she’s a question-asker. But questions from three year old’s, they differ and vary to those asked by older children, and often they make no sense at all. Quite possibly because preschoolers are rarely asking a question to receive an answer. They just like the sound of their own voice.
“Where are we going now, Mumma?”
“Home, darling.”
“Where are we going now, Mumma?”
“Home, darling.”
“Where are we going now, Mumma?”
“Home, Bump.”
“Where are we going now, Mumma?”
“HomeAndPleaseStopAskingMeSillyQuestions!!!”
Because, really, there is only so much my temper can take before it frays and breaks into a thousand pieces and irritation just overcomes me.
As I’m sure I’ve said at some point in the past– it’s extremely fortunate that children are so cute. Because, if they weren’t, their mothers may just eat them in the middle of the night, delirious with sleep deprivation and unable to control primal urges dictating that rest is essential for sanity and function and would somebody please shut this kid up??
***
On a slightly related note– the Bump is, actually, cute enough to eat in great big gulps, all pink dresses and sticky hands and fairy dancing. And I tell her so. “Bump, you are so cute– I am going to eat you all up!”
“No Mumma!” Says the Bump, full of three year old attitude, hand on hip and pout on face. “You can not eat me! I am not food. I am just people.”
The irrefutable, exasperating logic of small children. Really, who am I to argue with that?
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh, the terror of the 3′s! I would have gladly faced a pack of ravenous wolves rather than my 3yr old in full flight! She’s just turned 5, and I’m still getting over our battles that waged when she was 3…
“I am just people.”
That right there is gold. It is those moments, those adorable phrases that even in our grumpiest of moods coax a smile not just to our face but from our entire body that make all the shit worth it.
Seriously could of written this post. Except for me at the moment its TWOs
Aahhhhh, the tyrannical threes, just before the fucking fours. Then comes the the fabulous fives, followed by the sassy sixes…
You’re right, kids are designed to be cute so we don’t eat them. In built survival mechanism
I have a saying that I use on people who are being a little too precious about something: I’m sorry, you’re not the centre of the universe. My daughter is.
It’s pretty much how she viewed the world for a good long time, she’s 7 now, and she’d really like to still be the centre of the universe, but she’s discovered that having friends means giving that up. Or at least sharing the centre.
She was never one for the repeated question thing, although I don’t know if I trained her out of it or it’s just the way she is. When she was that age, if I’d answered the question and she asks again, I tell her something like we’re going to the moon. That either distracts with the details of how we get to the moon (“well, how do you think, could we drive?”, which sets her off planning), or she gives in to the near irresistible urge to correct people, and tell me that no I’m wrong, we’re going home (“well, there’s no fooling you, you’re too clever for me”), at which point the questions move on to something else.
So glad to know I’m not alone in the gorgeous terror that is a 3yo girl. they are so adorable yet so frustrating. and to think I’ve got another 11 months til she turns 4.
where do they get the energy? and daylight savings makes it worse “cause it’s still light mummy”
we’ve been lucky K dropped day sleeps when she was 2 but is still known to be wide awake at 10 even if she gets up at the crack of dawn
luv her to death but still
*hugs* to you
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I remember that infuriation crossed with delight at the silly questions little kids can ask from my ‘nanny’ days.
I loved the endless curiosity, but always started to go a little crazy when the questions got out of hand!
And the sticky hands! How do children get such sticky hands? is there some kind of elf who covers kids hands with tacky goo when you aren’t looking? Explain it to me, Lori! I don’t understand!