Whatever is causing the Joan Collins 'tude, deal with it. Embrace the pain, spank your inner moppet, whatever, but get over it.

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It was a brutal weekend. Bean's being four may actually drive me to drink.

Since the "bad" always seems to overshadow the "good" (man, I wish it didn't work that way), an honest assessment of the weekend reveals that there was more good than bad. But it's just like that Longefellow poem my mother used to say about me: when she was good, she was very good indeed. But when she was bad she was horrid.

Horrid.

We're not talking pushing children into traffic or pulling the legs off spiders; we're talkin' violence, strong language, adult content ...

The kicking, screaming, flailing hissy fits of lore at the slightest hint things may not go exactly her way.
The running away screaming "no!" and "I'm never going to be your friend again!"
The dramatic recitals of her punishments, with a liberal helping of *over* drama: "I'm never going to get to color again. And I'll never have any friends ..." all said in a pitiful pout/sob/whine that just begs my sarcastic bitca streak to make some kind of snarky remark.

Le sigh. For someone who doesn't like to sugar coat things and tends to shoot from the hip, often without a full run past a mental censor, parenting an over-the-top drama queen is a real challenge. When she runs off screaming "Don't talk to me! I'm never going to talk to you again!" I want to come back with "If *only*!" When she tells me she's never going to play with me again, I want to let her know the overwhelming joy I feel when contemplating a future without My Little Pony games.

And I'll admit, after several hours of turdburgery, I will let a "promises, promises" slip when told for the umpteenth time that she's never talking to me again.

But she still has that undercurrent of Bean sweetness and curiosity that saves the day. After all that turdliness, she'll pull something like "Mommy? I love you" out of the blue and I get that mental reset I so badly need.

Miss O is still just chugging along on her very own path. She's not talking a ton, but I ran through a bunch of picture flashcards with her yesterday, and she knew about half the words. Her clarity is lacking, although somehow mama, no and mine! all come through with no problems. I pick out a "grandma" in this video, the second of four in a series I call "A Study in Nap Avoidance"

From 8-22 - A Study in Nap Avoidance

(You can enjoy the full series here)
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