Seasons of Kid-dom

(note: I wrote this post several weeks ago and never got around to posting it)

Kids go through phases. One week they’re kind and sweet and their favorite sentence is “I wuv you.” The next week they’re screaming and hollering “NO!” and throwing their (and your) possessions across the room. Sometimes they go in and out of these phases in the same day. Sometimes you think maybe they’ve got bipolar disorder. But really they just have another disorder, one that is more common: Preschooler.  Or Human. Whatever.

One day a couple of weeks ago the hubs and I were remarking that we really love the phases that both of our little cherubs are in at the moment. Our three-year-old is silly and adventurous and super fun. Our nine-month-old is the same, but with fewer words and more drool. Both zoom around the house with alacrity and tenacity. Fun.

So you can imagine my dismay last week when my sweet, kind, loving son turned into some kind of self-obsessed, entitled, dramatic, crazed stranger. Maybe it could, at least in part, be attributed to his bout of Hand Foot Mouth (which, by the way, CAN GO AND DIE). The poor guy was home all. week. long. I’m sorry, did I say poor guy? I meant poor me. Because he was having the time of his life eating frozen yogurt every day and playing freely with all of his toys while Emma was at the nanny’s. But at some point he seemed to have decided that “No” was no longer in his vocabulary. Now, while he was ill, he got the cold treat for his mouth sores. But other than that all rules continued to apply. It’s not like he got whatever he wanted. But for some reason he felt like he ought to.

So it seems we have entered the Boundary Testing Phase (or as I like to call it, the I Double Dog Dare You to Still Love Me by the End of the Day Phase).

I was pretty excited about going to work last week. Not going to lie.

But we stood strong, and the battles do not last as long at this point. He may not yet have accepted that he cannot bring all of his earthly possessions to bed with him, leave the house naked, jump off the coffee table, ride his bike in the living room, eat candy for breakfast, or leave every toy in the house out on the floor forever. But he understands what it means when the trash bag comes out. 

Also: please add to my I Promised to Never Do This When I’m a Parent but I’ve Gone Ahead and Done It list “Utter the phrase ‘Because I said so.’” 

It’s a good thing he’s so darn cute and has those big blue eyes.