I done frying now, Mama

Seriously? She kills me.

Mallory was being SUCH a grump yesterday. Rick was home with her while I went to work and then Rick & I went to see Marley & Me (holy sad…more on that later) so Mallory went to Aunt Emy’s house. She had a good dinner and a good nap and everything yesterday so who knows why she was so grumpy last night on our way home from Em’s.

She got mad because I wouldn’t let her buckle her own carseat buckles (um, it’s FREEZING OUT and I’ll have to end up doing it anyway so HURRY UP). She got mad because she asked me where her dad was and then when I tried to answer her, she yelled “STOP TALKING!!!”. She got mad because I wanted her to hurry up and get out of the car. She got mad that I walked up to the house without her.

When we got inside, she was still crying and wanting me to pick her up. I told her I couldn’t because I had to feed Cooper. She immediately stopped crying and said “I feed Cooper. I done frying (crying) now, Mama”. Seriously?

So then we ate some pizza and she chose to skip her bath and maybe watch some Monkers Ink before bed. But when I went to get her dressed for bed – she REFUSED to let me put her diaper on because she wanted to do it herself, standing up. She was kicking me (and Arlo) and throwing the HUGEST fit. It was already almost 8p and past her bedtime so I got her diaper on her and babygated her in her room, where she continued to scream and cry and throw her paci and bear over the gate, and then cry for them. Then she threw her pajamas over the gate and cried for those.

I was then faced with a dilemma. I was BEYOND frustrated and my non-alcoholic Labatt wasn’t cutting it. So I decided that instead of throwing Mallory out a window, I would undecorate the tree and throw that out the front door instead. After that happened, Mallory had calmed down enough so that when I walked past her door to put the tree stand in the utility sink to dry out, she asked to put her jammies on. She was beyond cooperative at this point and told me “I stop crying!” and wanted to watch her movie but I explained that because of the tantrum, we couldn’t watch Monsters Inc. She then requested to watch her Naked Baby video so we watched that a few times and then it was time for bed.

I put her in bed with no story and she was all smiles and sunshine. Her only request was that I leave her door open. If you’ve been to my house, you know that it isn’t really a good set up for her to have her door open if we want to do anything else on the first floor. But when I started to shut her door halfway, she freaked out and ran to open it up all the way — but she got back into bed to read. Rick got home about 10 minutes later and she yelled out “HI DADDY” when she heard him walk in the house. A few minutes after that I had to walk by her room to the laundry room again and she asked me where Daddy was, so I sent Rick in there.

He came out a few minutes later grinning and said that he’d never had success like that before. She wanted him to read her a book and he told her it was late and that he’d read her books tomorrow. She tried to talk him into it still and then he said he reminded her that they read a lot of books that day already. She agreed and was happy with the idea of reading more books the next day, so she apparently curled up in bed and fell asleep. It’s like she needs the tantrum to get out frustration about something so I suppose I shouldn’t feel all bad when I lock her in her room for 10 minutes to let her cry, eh?

This morning at 4.30a I woke up to my sweet little girl staring at me, ready to climb into our bed. I wonder if it’s a bad thing that we let her climb in bed with us every morning like that but I don’t really have a problem with it. Especially this week when Rick is home with her and letting her get in our bed allows her to fall back asleep so Rick can try to sleep in. If we fought it at 4.30a, we’d all be up for the duration so hopefully we aren’t creating a great big huge problem with this. Any advice is welcome.