The Terrible Threes

Let me set the scene for y’all. It’s last Saturday afternoon, and Riley and I have just returned from running errands. He has started to get a little whiny, so I skip going to the grocery and just take him straight home so we can have lunch.

He tells me he has to go potty, so I make the perfectly reasonable request that he pull his own pants down. He refuses but I stand firm. And that’s when it happens. He absolutely, 100 percent, completely falls apart. These pictures don’t even begin to do his reaction justice.

I know he can pull his own pants down. I know he does it by himself at school, and I know he did so for Kenny twice, twice, earlier that same morning. But for some reason, he always wants me to do it for him when I’m around.

In order to save time, I usually give in and just do it myself. I stood my ground on Saturday, though. I flat-out refused to do something I knew he could do himself. And he lost it. He melted down, sobbed, kicked, thrashed, and begged me to help him.

This went on for the better part of an hour.

We even moved the ridiculousness to the upstairs bathroom, which is where he eventually acquiesced, pulled his own darn pants down, and finally went potty. But then he melted down again when I told him it was time to eat lunch. Naturally, because how dare I suggest a crazy idea like that?

He calmed down enough to tell me that he wanted to sit on the couch, so I let him while Kenny and I got lunch ready. He sat, surrounded by his blankets and Giraffey, with a tearstained face and bloodshot eyes, watching whatever college football game we had on at the time.

After a little while, he decided he was ready to eat and, without a word, walked over to the dining room table where his lunch was waiting for him, climbed up into his chair, and started eating. The rest of our meal went off without a hitch, so that was one small victory of the day. Needless to say, though, he exhausted himself with all of the earlier crying and thus napped really well that afternoon.

This was the worst occurrence so far, but these types of episodes have become fairly common. The slightest little thing will set his emotions into a tailspin. And the whining…..

Oh, the whining. All the whining.

He is SO. WHINY. these days. About everything. I know going to school has a lot to do with it, what with lots of activities and a too-short naptime every weekday. And I also know that his age has a lot to do with it, too. I keep trying to tell myself that the whininess is a phase and he’ll eventually grow out of it, but that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with when it happens so often on a daily basis.

However, he has been slightly more agreeable lately. When I ask him to do something or try to steer him in another direction for one reason or another, a lot of the time he will simply say, “Oh, okay.” And the way he says it in that cute little voice of his just kills me.

And then very recently he started telling me, “Mama, I love you all the time.”

My jaw dropped the first time he said that to me. I can’t even handle how precious that is. Arrow straight into my cold, impatient heart.

Bottom line: of course he’s not completely awful all the time, but I will say this. The terrible twos have nothing on the terrible threes.

Only three hundred and twenty-four days to go until he’s four!