Three Years Old and Always a Handful...

Our daughter has been working very hard to drive both Papa and Momma into the loony bin lately.  Mostly she is just being Three(!) but the big issue happens to be her behavior with the animals.  Nala, the poor little 9lbs dog that we have, is tormented nearly every waking moment that Alyssa can possibly spare in between bites of lunch and asking 209809845 versions of "why" a day.  The cats barely leave the unfinished portion of the basement that is gated off (Sanctuary! Sanctuary!) when she is awake.  Overall, Alyssa seems to have lost all of her listening skills when she is dealing with growling or hissing animals.  Rather, she simply laughs, or shriek-giggles, in their faces and nearly gets bit.

Truly, she will learn one of these days that the nicer she is, the sooner the pets will actually come to her instead of running away.

So enter a new and fun issue...MESSES!

Monday--open a weight attached to a balloon, which happened to be sand, on the living room carpet.
Tuesday--Dawn poured out all over kitchen and dining room floors.

--soap in eye while washing it off hands....*sigh, Momma needs to make sure to put toddler's hair in ponytail before letting her wash her hands while cleaning up messes*
--Removes own dirty diaper and THEN yells for me....Thanks kid.

What will Wednesday bring me??  Hopefully a nap!  I mean, I vacuumed on Monday and mopped on Tuesday...I should be good for the week, right? HA!

A Typical Day....

Things are starting to settle into a predictable pattern finally.

Wyatt wakes up 2-3 times each night for bottles--what I consider 'night' for the kids though is Alyssa's bedtime until her 'green light' to get up rather than times I'm asleep though.

Alyssa gets up and rouses a tired Momma by yelling "Green Light, Momma!!  It's GREEN LIGHT!"  We get breakfast going and it must be eaten before going downstairs to play with the kitties who are still being acclimated to the new house and therefore are restricted to the downstairs temporarily.

Nala (the dog) gets tormented dozens-tens of dozens of times daily by a toddler who enjoys bullying the poor little dog.  I'm waiting not-so-patiently for her to nip Alyssa's hand/arm to make her realize that pulling tails or grabbing fur on the back/sides is NOT a good idea.  (Yes, I have tried all sorts of methods to get her to stop these actions and I am at a loss other than she is in need of the hard way of learning apparently for this one...*sigh*)  Thankfully our poor, tormented dog is a little 1/2 chihuahua mix and has endured so much abuse from this girl without actually biting (lots of growling though) that I'm fairly confident that if she does get nipped it'll be a warning shot much like the two dog bites I've received from my large dog when I was growing up.  Oh, did I forget to mention that she inherited her love of egging animals on from my toddler self?  Yeah....sadly I had the hard lesson as well but it was a quick learn!

Papa gets up early and goes to work and is home in the late afternoon most days.  This relieves a lot of my stress because this begins the downhill spiral towards bedtime that many parents of toddlers are well aware of.

Supper is hit or miss on how well the toddler behaves.

After supper is a crazy blur of anything from snuggles with a movie, downstairs playtime (tea anyone?), or meltdown modes over animal torture punishments.  Any combination of those can be found around here on any given day of course.  Thank goodness I've got at least a few months before I have to start scolding Wyatt for chasing the poor dog!

Any recommendations on a good toddler/doggy relationship therapist?

Good laughs and Best Parenting Message

Sorry for checking out on y'all for such a span of time!  I'd like to make up for it by sending you on a reading adventure...Parental hilarity via comedian Jason Good.  I have been crying due to how much laughter I've gotten out of this man's site this morning (not all of which was the pain that a c-section and laughter combined cause).  Please take a few minutes to peruse his posts and remember your kids' (or brace yourself if they aren't at that age yet) antics at various young stages.

http://jasongood.net/

And for a dose of seriousness that I completely needed after over two weeks of crazy (and expected) toddler rebellion to all the changes in her life:

http://www.iseeme.com/truly-engaging-with-your-child.html

We need a reminder sometimes (or everyday) that there must be times when it is OKAY to stop being the 'adult' and just make some amazing memories with our kids.  Adventures and messes (OMG please no messes!) are necessary and FUN!  They need to be embraced in childhood and parenthood or we've missed out on the biggest excitement that can be had at those ages!  My Momma-ness cries for the missed opportunities already passed by but I'll be keeping this short article on a very prominent place to help me remember that messes can be cleaned so just make some on purpose!