*Heavy sigh*

Awhile back, I talked about how some research has shown that kids tend to go through disequilibrium around the half-year mark. Sam will be 3 1/2 next month, and the terrible 3's have officially hit our house.

 

On Thursday of last week, I got the first glimpse of what was about to come.  It was just general naughtiness, nothing I could really put my finger on, but in a general way the behavior was very out of character for Sam.  I have been wanting to paint the bathroom for awhile, and I did have this feeling like - "Hmm, maybe I shouldn't try to do this now, because it probably won't turn out well".  You know how you've heard you should always trust your instincts?  You really should.

 

After I'd cleaned off the yellow Sam-sized handprints from the front of my (Not Normally Yellow) bathroom cabinets, I banished Sam to his room and kept him on A Very Short Leash for the rest of the night.  Figuratively, not literally - though I have to admit, I just may have been tempted for a brief moment.

 

The weekend was like a marathon of episodes of a really bad sitcom.  Things that might be funny if you see them on the TV screen, but not so funny when you have to clean up the aftermath.  Like when I was carrying a bucket of sudsy water outside to wash my car, and Sam ran up to me and, as quick as lightning, yanked on one side of the bucket so the water spilled all over the kitchen floor, landing, and stairs.  Trust me, there was no laugh track playing at our house - although there was a deep, reverberating voice narrating the words "GET INTO YOUR ROOM RIGHT NOW OR SO HELP ME..."

 

And this morning, I received a phone call from my husband that Sam had detached a clump of hair from Natalie's skull using brute force.  A clump.  When you hear the words "a clump" and "hair" in the same sentence, it sends a shiver down your spine.  I have not yet surveyed the damage first-hand, but it can't be pretty.  I've been informed that Sam has lost custody of one of his favorite toys for the remainder of the week (and with just cause).

 

Anyway!  Let's talk about something else more fun, because frankly, I'm getting more annoyed every minute just from typing this.

 

Like my garden!  I am doing some experimenting this year with fun, new things which I've never grown.  Red sweet corn - did you know there was such a thing?  I've only seen the small, decorative kind of red corn.  But as we speak, I have red sweet corn sprouting in my garden.  And artichokes!  I didn't even know they could grow in Minnesota, with our approximately 2-day growing season.  But the seed packet informs me that they do, by showing our grand state on the "when to plant" map.  We even have an actual color that corresponds to an actual month range on the map key!  So it must be so!  And I found some fun varieties of heirloom tomato plants at the Farmer's Market.  One that produces striped tomatoes, another called a "Black Plum" tomato, and a "Russian Persimmon".

 

Also, trees!  Now, those of you who know me well will laugh at this.  For, oh, the last 5 years or so, we've been talking about moving to a single-family house with more property.  (We live in an upper-lower duplex, and although we don't rent out the bottom half anymore, we mainly use it for storage so it's largely wasted space.  And who really needs two kitchens and two laundry rooms.)  I think, after 5 years, we're finally ready to give up the dream.  After all, moving is A LOT OF WORK.  Inertia is just easier.  So I'm planting trees.  Trees which won't fruit for 3 or more years, which basically ties me to this land.  Because after paying so much money for these trees, and all the time put into their care, I want to be around to see them pay off!

 

First, I purchased 2 apple trees from Linder's (a local chain).  I bought a Honeycrisp and a Sweet Sixten...yum.  I paid $50 each, which seemed like a steal since the independent greenhouses I'd perused charged $75 to $100 for the same trees.

 

Then, I was at Fleet Farm last week (another local chain) and found my holy grail...a Mesabi cherry tree.  I have been looking, and looking for one of these for a couple of months now.  It was marked $44.99.  Awesome!  But even more awesome, it rang up at 25% off - $33.74!!!  If I had room in my yard, I was sorely tempted to buy a pear tree and a plum tree, also.  Maybe next year, I'll find a place to squeeze them in.

 

Ah...now I'm feeling much better.  I'd so much rather think and talk about my garden than my behaviorally-challenged 3 1/2-year-old at the moment.

Good Times and Bad Times

When Sammy was 2 1/2, that was a really rough age for me. It seemed he was constantly testing the limits, throwing tantrums, and generally being a pain in the butt. Not that there weren't good times, too, but in general, it was very trying for me.

Then, shortly before he turned 3, things turned around. He became an easy-going, happy child. He still throws an occasional tantrum, or willfully defies me, but I can usually turn things around pretty quickly. Sunday, he didn't nap (par for the course on the weekends these days) so by 6:00 he was falling apart with tiredness. After about half an hour of butting heads with him over EVERYTHING, he came up to me and said, "I need a hug and a kiss." We snuggled for a few minutes, and then I had a talk with him about how tired he was, and that that was probably why he was having such a hard time listening. Wouldn't you know, after that he acted like an angel until bedtime at 7:00. Easy peasy.

So, what's this I've always heard about the 3's being so much more terrible than the 2's? Unfortunately, I've discovered this current behavior is probably a short-lived phase. I read a study recently that basically said that children tend to be easy-going and well-behaved around their birthdays. Around their half-birthdays, they go through a phase where everything changes and their behavior becomes disruptive, defiant, and lock-yourself-in-the-bathroom-and-have-a-good-scream inducing. (Sorry, I did a quick Google search, and couldn't figure out the right combination of keywords to link to the study. You'll just have to take my word for it, unless I can come up with the citation later.)

The biggest problem for me is that my kids are about a year and a half apart in age. If you do the math, you'll see that we will always have a kid going through the difficult phase. This is proving true right now - Natalie is going through a difficult stage, while Sammy has been well-behaved.

I also have a copy of a "Cycles of Development" chart from The Gesell Institute of Child Development, but that is even less encouraging. I don't know if I can legally scan in the chart and post it here, but the citation on the bottom of the sheet says the Gesell Institute books are available at your public library. The cycles are: A) Smooth; B) Breakup; C) Sorting-Out; D)Inwardizing; E) Expansion; and F) "Neurotic". I don't exactly know the definitions of all those categories, but "smooth" is the only one that sounds promising to me. The only ages under the "smooth" phase are: 4 weeks, 40 weeks, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, and 16 years. That seems like an awful lot of time spent in cycles B through F.

Maybe no one but me is interested in this sort of thing, so I'm sorry if I've bored you to tears! (I have a degree in psychology, so obviously I find the brain fascinating.)