Trying Threes

What, you thought the acting out/meltdowns ended after the terrible twos? Well, you’d be wrong, at least in this house.  Our sweet sweet Callie is now having terrible, awful, embarrassing, frustrating breakdowns over seemingly minuscule things.  “That skirt makes my panties feel funny,” “I don’ like the ruffle on this shirt.” Which means now we aren’t getting dressed and will cry because “I need help!” but yet “You don’t do it right!”  She recently had her dance recital where it took 1 1/2 to get her ready and out the door, and when I say ready I mean in a t-shirt and tights (no costume) because she didn’t like how the tights made her feel.  My patience is thin, almost nonexistence, with these little hiccups in our day.  Another example, today in Target we were picking out a buggy to ride in.  She picked it our for us but the straps were bucking for Chloe so we had to switch to another one- that looked identical like the one we were in mind you.  Callie decided she wasn’t going to ride in it because it looked ‘dirty.’  “Fine,” I said “you can walk.”  This put her over the edge and all of a sudden she’s “NOT GOING ANYWHERE!!” Yeap, she screamed that in Target for all to hear.  I started to walk away, usually she’ll come running when she thinks I’m going to leave her, but nope, she really wasn’t going to go anywhere this time.  At this point she’s crying and a lady is looking at me, judging HARD and comments to her friend about the situation.  I couldn’t come up with a witty comment at that time (this always seems to happen to me, darn it!) but gave her a judging glance right back at her.  Anyway, I parked the buggy, got Chloe out, grabbed Callie by the arm and we left- kicking and screaming.  Ugh, and it doesn’t end there.  After 10 minutes at the car trying to buckle her into her seat, taking her movie time and crayons away for the day, we left, still kicking and screaming “I don’t want anything taken away!”  Yeap, sleeping it off in the car isn’t really working right now.  I started reading a book a couple of days of go called “How to talk so your child will listen and how to listen to your child will talk.”  I have felt during these breakdowns that I’m not clearly hearing what the problem is and she’s just not able to convey those feelings/wants either.  I know she can go with the flow and I also know she’s going to be disappointed in some situations, it’s the accepting of these and moving on from them is where we are stuck.  Yes, this won’t be fixed over night, yes this is supper frustrating, and yes I still love her to pieces.  I’m arming myself with knowledge and prayer for this part of our journey, hoping the two will come together and we’ll be able to move past the daily meltdowns.