Yeah, I get it now

So in an effort to lighten the mood from my downer of a post last time, I planned on writing a post about all of our fun spring activities over the last few weeks.  However, the last few days have resulted in me needing to vent and since my poor husband is probably tired of hearing about it, I'm going to use this as my platform.

So amidst all of our fun in the last month or so, we have been dealing with what is known in the parenting world as the "terrible twos."  I never really understood this term because before I had kids I always thought to myself, how can an entire YEAR of life be bad?  I distinctly remember some good friends of ours telling us a story about their first born.  They said he'd always been a very sweet, mild mannered, compliant child and then one day it was like someone flipped a switch and this violent, angry, irrational boy emerged one evening before bed and was throwing books and toys and screaming at the suggestion that it was time for him to go to bed.  I was six months pregnant with Olivia at the time and I remember Matt and I thinking that they really MUST be exaggerating.  Surely they had done something worse than suggest bedtime to provoke him, right?

Well, fast forward to now and my own 28 month old sweet, wonderful baby girl is now exhibiting behaviors that I quite honestly cannot even begin to wrap my brain around.  It's true we have been seeing a gradual shift towards this more difficult "willful" behavior since she was about 16 months but nothing and I mean NOTHING can compare to what we've experienced in the last 3 weeks.

The new "behavior," as I'll call it starts first thing in the morning when we, now tentatively, enter her room to get her and she usually has an idea in her head of how she would like to proceed with the morning.  Unfortunately, Mommy usually has different ideas so it results in 30-ish minutes of hysterical crying in her crib while she tells me to "go away."  When she gets bored with that, she allows me to re-enter at which point we start the negotiation of getting dressed for the day.  She has to pick out her clothes (which I'm completely fine with) but then sometimes even when she has picked them out, as I'm helping her put them on she decides that's not in fact what she wanted to wear and HOW DARE I put something on her that she no longer wants.  So, the hysterical crying/tantrums resume.  By now it's usually 7:45ish depending on what time the first "behavior" began and we *finally* make our way downstairs to eat.  Mealtime is and always has been my least favorite part of the day anyway, so now we just add in at least one or two crying fits and it's a regular party.  Usually around very important things such as how I make her food, what I make her, or how I serve the food to her (ie: she wanted me to put the blueberries ON the placemat NOT in a bowl).  The day goes on and on this way with fewer and fewer moments of fun and more and more moments of distress, crying and utter bewilderment on my part.  There's also a lot of dramatic throwing herself on the floor which was actually a bit amusing because she will run out of the room screaming and crying to "throw" herself on the floor but she slows down and instead lays herself on the floor in a way that won't allow her to actually injure herself.  Smart girl.

I had the brilliant idea of having a garage sale yesterday while nearly 37 weeks pregnant.  Normally Matt and I have no trouble managing her while doing something like this which requires one of us to be present pretty much all day but with the new "behavior" we found today to be even more exhausting than we could have imagined.  The tantrum that took the cake today was Olivia crumbling into a ball on the kitchen floor sobbing because I put my hair in a ponytail.  Yep.  You read it right.

Don't get me wrong, I love this little girl to pieces but most days lately I feel like I'm walking on eggshells fearing that at any moment something I do or say might make her mad enough that it will be 45 minutes before we have peace again.

So to all the parents out there who warned me? Thanks.  I get it now.