The light at the end of the terrible threes tunnel

Hello again people, I'm back again, less than 12 months after my last post, so this has to be a good sign for me right?

So for anyone who has kids, you'll know what the phrase terrible threes means. It's that horrible 12 months where your child has a birthday and then all of a sudden turns into the spawn of Satan.

Ok saying all of a sudden isn't entirely accurate, the terrible threes more sneaks up on you. At first the temper tantrums your newly aged up child displays seem fairly similar to the ones you saw when they were two. Hopefully you've even gotten to the point where you recognise the first signs of a temper tantrum giving you a bit of an edge when it comes to diffusing a bad situation. However very slowly the three year old tantrum sneaks its way into your life. And this one is nothing like a two year old tantrum.

Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

Pictured: a typical three year old temper tantrum

For one the intensity and duration of a three year old temper tantrum can be more than twice of that of a two year old. The child is just that little bit older, with just that little bit more stamina, and they use this to their advantage. They also get that rage strength that makes drunk angry people so scary, so fighting them is like wrestling with a live crocodile. But the worst thing about a three year old temper tantrum is that you can never guess what is going to set them off. It could be because you've asked them to pick up their blocks, or put on their pants, but it could be because their favourite pyjamas are in the wash and every other night time outfit you've bought them is boring. (I get the complaint that everything is boring a lot.) 

The first time you see a real three year old temper tantrum you're so caught off guard you end up giving in to your darling child just to get the screaming to stop, and hopefully save your glasses from shattering with the noise. The second time it happens, you're slightly more prepared and you try to reason with your kid. But your kid is even more prepared than you are, and now knows that you will give up eventually. This knowledge gives them the strength to out-scream you for the next thirty minutes, because they know that eventually you will break. The third time your kid throws a tantrum, you're so shell-shocked from the first two it takes all your strength to not pack your bags and run away to the circus. 

This is the point where all your helpful friends and family decide to chime in with "I told you three year olds were worse than two year olds last year..." and you'll smile grimly all the time punching them in their smug faces silently in your head while you try to wrestle your darling child out the door. You will start to read parenting advice blogs desperately trying to find the right advice to turn your newly minted devil back into the darling child they were yesterday. You'll try the naughty corner, you'll try reward systems, you'll try reverse psychology, you'll try walking away. You will curse Super Nanny each and every time one of her methods fails miserably. You'll start collecting brochures for military school just in case this isn't just the terrible threes and things get desperate. Your Google search history will become incredibly bizarre as you try to figure out if the latest tantrum is a sign you need to contact a priest, or just limit the amount of yellow food dye you're feeding your kid. You'll start looking forward to bed time more than ever because while they're asleep they look more like that beautiful child you have been raising all this time than during the day.

Life will become a mine field, and you're the brave soldier tip-toeing through it trying to figure out which patches of ground aren't going to cause a major explosion. And to make things harder, the temper tantrums aren't constant. (I know what you're thinking, how can only occasional tantrums be better than constant ones?) It's because when things start looking normal again you let your guard down. You enjoy having your sweet loving child back and begin to forget the monster that hides under their skin. You'll even bend the rules more than you would before, just because it is such a relief to have your obedient, helpful child back. But they are expecting this, and this is when they strike again. The tantrums come in waves, and the space between them can be as little as a week or as much as a month. But you never know which one it's going to be until it's too late and you're scrambling for a safety helmet in the middle of a toy storm. (trust me books hurt when being hurled by a three year old)

But one day a miracle happens. You ask your child to do something that on any other day would result in a meltdown of epic proportions, but instead of screaming and crying and telling you they don't love you anymore, they just agree to do what they are told, and wander off happily. You will nearly pass out from the shock of it all, but you don't mention it to them because you don't want to remind them they have the power to refuse this. But it happens again, and again and again. That's when you realise you've left the terrible threes behind, and you are now the parent of a beautiful four year old. That is one of the best feelings a parent can experience. 

Now I'm still the parent of a three year old for another month, and given that Miss K has always been up to 6 months behind most children her age developmentally, I don't know if that means I get an extra 6 months of terrible threes behaviour or not, (lucky me.) But I will tell you that as recently as two weeks ago, I finally managed to get her to start dressing herself, and this week she ate a slice of apple for me, something I have never been able to get her to do before. As a battle weary mum, I am happy to take both of these things as a major victory and not question things much further than that.

Before the new, a bit of the old

Happy 2014 my lovely people, I know I've been pretty absent the past month but things around here have been CRAZY busy these past weeks, and sadly when the chips are down this blog is the first place to get ignored. So thank you all for your never ending patience while you waited for me to get my head above water yet again, and to reward you all I have decided to grace the interwebs with yet another nugget of sparkling wisdom.

So to say that December was the worst month I've had in a long time seems like a slight understatement. There were pretty sad lows, a few health scares and lots of tears. My big sister lost her brother in law to suicide at the beginning of the month, and the whole family are still trying to come to terms with their grief and loss. I knew her brother in law, having gone to high school with him for a few years, and I even did my debutante ball with him back when I was 16. He very kindly stepped in to be my partner when all my other potentials fell through, even though by that stage he'd moved to a different school. As an added bonus, when his big brother finally married my big sister we were partnered together again for the wedding party and I already knew he was a good dancer. It was a life cut tragically short and his absence is strongly felt by everyone who knew him. My heart has broken time and time again for my big sister and my brother in law this month watching them feel such pain and I can only hope the day comes soon that this all becomes a little easier for them.

Also receiving a major hit was my sister in law who discovered in November that she would need to get her leg amputated. She had a bad infection in her foot and it hit the bone. It shouldn't have been so urgent except that she also discovered that she is pregnant again in November (Yay!!) and infections tend to be pretty bad for developing babies, so they had to chop the leg off. No one knew what was going to happen to the baby, whether or not it could cope with the anesthetic and the shock of major surgery, but luckily both mum and baby came out the other side OK and we now get to welcome a new baby into our family later this year. I have already advised I will not be joining her in getting knocked up this time (Miss K is 3 months younger than their daughter) but I will happily watch her swell up from the sidelines.

Then Miss K and I had an emergency visit to the Sunshine hospital on Christmas Eve after she fell and hit her head on the tiled floor at Nonna's house. I didn't see the actual fall as I was in the laundry doing some washing, but Miss K's Nonna insisted that the fall was only minor and took Miss K off for a drive to cheer her up. Unfortunately for us Miss K has a habit of falling asleep in the car, and sure enough she dozed off this time too. For anyone with basic knowledge of head injuries, you'd know that you never let anyone with a bump to the head go to sleep, as you can't properly observe a sleeping baby. Sure enough Miss K woke up with vomiting and dilated pupils and we rushed her to the emergency room to make sure everything was ok. The staff at Sunshine hospital were absolutely amazing, and knew exactly how to examine a sick two year old. There were stickers and bubbles and everything else a little girl could love, and she didn't even realise she was undergoing medical tests. Luckily for us she only had a mild concussion, there were no signs of bleeding to the brain or fractures to the skull so we were given permission to give her some pain killers and after watching her tear around the emergency room in a Cosy Coupe for an hour and a half they were happy enough to let us go home. For Ady and I the visit to the hospital was an awful trip down memory lane, as it was nearly three years ago we made our first visit to an emergency room when Miss K got meningitis. As horrible luck goes, Ady's car broke down that morning so he couldn't even drive us to the hospital. I had to throw Miss K into Nonna's car and get her to take us to the hospital and Ady caught up with us there. Watching him walk up to our bed on the ward was the most relieved I had felt since the whole disaster started and I burst into tears. By then we had been told that she was going to be ok, but I still couldn't relax until we were allowed to go home and I could see my mum. Of course for me, home was still more than two hours away, so it was a white knuckle trip home. Poor Ady tried to make conversation the whole drive but I was too busy waiting for Miss K to throw up again to really talk.

Despite having taken a knock to the head, Miss K did bounce back pretty quickly, and because I was waking her up every 4 hours to take more pain killers, her Christmas started at 2am when she saw her first present, her very own Cosy Coupe, which my little sister Kim had been putting together while we were driving home. It was just dumb luck that she had already spent the better part of her afternoon screaming around the hospital in one the day before so she knew how to drive it, but I'd had the car on lay by for a whole month before Christmas, because I am just an awesome mum.

Pictured: The daughter of the best mum ever!

Christmas went pretty smoothly despite everything I've mentioned above, we had lunch at our place with almost all the family, Ben and Tristan decided to spend Christmas with Tristan's family so we won't get to give them their gifts until they come down for mum's birthday next week, but Ady did get to come and spend the day with his daughter, and watching the two of them play together was a wonderful way to spend Christmas. She got more presents than I could possibly find homes for, including a kitten, which has been named Bertie Beetle (because why not?) and he is quickly becoming one of the family. 

He's pretty cute for a fur ball.

Given that I am very allergic to cats and usually go out of my way to avoid them at all costs, I will admit that he's pretty cute for a cat, and because I am the one who feeds him and cleans his litter tray, I get most of the cuddles off him, but Miss K is trying her hardest to get him to play with her, even if her methods are rough to say the least. Surprisingly enough Bertie puts up with most of her rough housing, only crying when she grabs him by the tail or the legs. I have had to rescue him from her death grip on more than one occasion but I'm sure they'll find their groove soon enough.

So that's pretty much summed up the past month. Ady is still in town, so Miss K has been spending time with him every day this week, much to her delight, and I'm loving it because it makes a wonderful bargaining chip for me whenever she refuses to go to bed. Any time she gets up one too many times I tell her she can't see dad tomorrow if she misbehaves and it pulls her head right in. I've also gotten some much needed quiet time while they go off together so I'm feeling almost relaxed at the moment. Except that we're also trying potty training right now so there's always something to worry about.

Well I'll be back again tomorrow with more gems for you guys, so stay tuned for that. Also I'm taking part in three blog series put together by Karen from Baking in a Tornado this month, the first one coming up very soon, so keep your eyes peeled guys. But until then, as always, stay awesome and happy new year.

I love it!!

I'm sure you're all surprised to see me writing right now. Especially given that lately the only time I hit this old blog up is when summoned by the great Karen at Baking in a Tornado to write for one of her awesome series.  Well it's almost 11 o'clock at night, and I'm the only one still out of bed, and I've suddenly been hit with the urge to write to you guys. So firstly sorry for my neglect, and thank you for your patience. I hope tonight's inspiration is not short lived and that I can get back into the swing of things. Especially since I feel so good right now. It's been a long time in the making but I can honestly say I love life right now. It feels amazing to finally say that I am happy. This doesn't mean I spend my days singing from the roof tops, or even that I smile 24 hours a day. I still have bad moods, I still get tired, and I have a chest cold right now, so even at my absolute best things aren't perfect, but they are still pretty damned good.

So just because I am such a giving and thoughtful person, I thought I'd share the love with you guys, and let you know what the go is around here, and why I'm so darn happy now.  So the first bit of good news is I finally finished my studies. I have no idea whether or not I've passed yet, I won't get the results from the final exam until next month, but I've submitted my application to graduate next year with the rest of the class, and all I can do now is sit and wait for some kind of confirmation.  The final exam was nothing short of a shambles, first off I missed the exam date because of a screw up with messages from the school, and I had to organise with my tutor to "re-sit" the exam. Then on the day I had the exam booked the servers at the TAFE all crashed, so I couldn't access the system to actually take the exam.  The joys of being totally reliant on modern technology.  I was offered the choice of coming back another day, or going somewhere with free wi-fi and a borrowed laptop and going ahead with the exam on the day. Given I was already two weeks late to sit, I decided against trying again another day and my tutor and I headed of to McDonalds and I took my exam accompanied by the smell of fry oil and pre-schoolers enjoying a trip out with mum and dad.  I can't say it was my easiest exam to get through, but it certainly was the most memorable. I'm sure I'll spend my twilight years regaling my grandchildren with stories of the day grandma took her final exam next to the play equipment at Maccas. Then we will all sit back and laugh at my wild antics as a youngin'.

Now I'm sure you're all thinking I decided to sit back and enjoy all the free time that not being a student affords me. That would be true except for two things. Firstly I never actually studied until the eleventh hour the whole year, so there hasn't actually been an increase in free time for me, and secondly, I have gone completely insane and decided to fill in the non-existent free time by opening up a business.  I am now an independent Kaszazz consultant, which means that I get paid to make scrap book layouts and beautiful cards, and then sell the products that I used to make my art.  It's still early days at the moment, but I've already held one workshop which was open to general public, and started regular private workshops for a select few people (read my big sister and sister in law.)  Once I'm more confident in the stock I'm actually meant to be selling and the skills I need to hold the workshops, I'll start expanding and actually hold more public workshops and hopefully make more sales.  It has been a huge learning experience already, and it can only go up from here. Except for my bank account, that will definitely keep shrinking because I can't help but keep buying every thing I see in the catalog.

I'm still also employed part time at the law firm, and despite it being as depressing as you could imagine spending your days facilitating other people's divorces and custody battles, I am loving being so busy eight hours a day. I start running the minute I get in the door at 8:45 and I don't stop until 5:30 some nights. It's hectic, stressful and some times confronting, but at the end of the day I walk out the door knowing that I've done a good day's work and earned my wage for the day. And the screams and cuddles I get from Miss K when I go to pick her up are always the best part of the day. And all of the worrying I did before I started that she wouldn't adjust, or that it would make life difficult for her were all for nothing. She is of course in the best hands possible being left in the care of mum and Sam, and I usually spend the first five minutes at my sister's house being shown the latest art project they did together, or hearing the new words she learned today. She's always so proud to show off to me, and it's great to see her getting to try things that she'd never get to do with me.

The rest of life with Miss K is pretty peachy too right now.  Of course she's a typical 2 year old, which means she pushes her luck every chance she gets, trying to learn her boundaries and expand them when she can.  We're still learning every day what it means to be a mum and daughter, and our relationship is constantly evolving, and of course I have to do a lot of mean things as her mum, like make sure she eats vegetables on a semi-regular basis, and pick her nose when she has a cold, and enforce rules, even when I don't feel like being the bad cop today, and there are days where it takes a lot of chanting "it's for her own good" to myself to get through another temper tantrum, but we always come out the end of it happy.

I am so proud of the person Miss K is becoming, she is so fearless and she charges through life head first at all times. She loves meeting new people and charms the pants off everyone the moment she speaks to them.  She actually met her Nonno for the first time a month ago, Ady finally having reconciled with his father and they are speaking again for the first time in years. I'd never met his father the whole time we dated, and I wasn't even sure if he was aware when Miss K was born, so we're making up for a lot of lost time at the moment, and in December Miss K and I have been summoned to meet the rest of his family at their annual family reunion. So far Nonno seems to be a doting grandfather, and there are always presents for Miss K whenever we visit, and mysteriously they are always perfectly suited to her. We went down this weekend and there were colouring pencils and Little People figurines waiting in Nonno's kitchen for her.  I have no idea how he knows exactly what to get her, but Miss K certainly always appreciates the gifts and I appreciate the effort and thought.

Things with Ady are going smoothly at the moment, and we've managed to navigate our way through several issues without everything dissolving into screaming matches and name calling lately. I can't say that everything there is perfect, because there are still all the reasons why we never survived as a couple staring us in the face, which does sometimes make it hard to get along, but we're trying to work together for Miss K's sake and so far it's going ok. We're now starting to talk about Miss K staying with her dad by herself, and we're aiming for starting the visits after Miss K turns 3, so I've now given myself something new to stress about. Yay!

Well that's all from me for now, I should probably get to bed too given I need to be up in 7 hours to get ready for work again, the daily grind continues.  I hope to be back again soon, but until then, stay awesome.

Lessons in parenting from a one year old

I'm back again. Call it a need to overcompensate for the three months of complete silence but I just can't stay away tonight.

So for anyone who has been paying attention recently, you would know I am elbow deep in the middle of raising a toddler. A toddler who has hit the terrible twos with such gusto you'd think there was an award given at the end of it. For the past two years I have tried to prepare myself for the first glimpse of the monster that would take over my lovely daughter for the next two years, but nothing in the world can prepare you for this. Not even babysitting my wonderful nieces and nephews when they were two (or still are in one niece's case) was enough to even make me aware of what I was in for.

Of course it doesn't help that most children behave better for the babysitter than they ever do for their parents, even if the babysitter is a close family member. So apart from the occasional bout of tears when they wouldn't get their way, my eldest niece and nephew were an absolute dream for me during the terrible twos. Of course I got to hand them back to their parents after a few hours and return to my blissfully ignorant life as a single and carefree woman. These days I don't have the same luxuries and instead I am the one being handed a screaming and belligerent toddler who is both angry at me for ignoring her and begging me for cuddles at the same time. Top that off with the sudden and urgent clingyness which means that not even her father is good enough for cuddles any more and you end up with one very stressed and frustrated mum who can't even use the toilet alone anymore.

Dinner time is usually the worst time as most mums will attest. It is the end of the day, you have been chained to each other for up to ten hours already if you gave birth to the most dreaded of children, an early riser, and you now need to juggle the task of playing with fire while distracting a tired and demanding diva with pleas to go back into the lounge room and watch Bananas in Pyjamas while you get dinner ready. And then after half an hour of prepping and cooking the meal (or five minutes of jamming it into the microwave and pacing the kitchen while you wait for the bell to ring), your spawn of Satan darling child becomes a haughty food critic, turning their nose up at your offering and pushing the plate away. (Or worse putting it in their mouth then spitting it straight out again and holding it out to you horrified, as if you had just tried to poison them.)

We had gotten to this taste test and spit out point in our evening last night when I finally snapped and my head exploded. I had run out of ideas at this point for how to get Miss K to eat her pastie and I was exhausted. I had tried emotional blackmail, I had tried reasoning, I had tried bribing, I had even tried yelling. She just sat in her chair looking at me like I had just told her the truth about Santa and crying. Given that the last weapon in my armory had been defeated I finally had to give up and walk out of the room before the whole ordeal escalated into anarchy and name calling. I decided to head to my bedroom for a quiet minute to collect my thoughts and have a quick cigarette. I had almost finished the smoke when I realised that things were quiet. Giving yourself a haircut with scissors you found under the table quiet. I rushed to the lounge room to see exactly what Miss K had managed to destroy in my absence only to find her sitting quietly in her chair eating the last few crumbs off her plate.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I had won the battle, but I still can't figure out if I've won the war. Did Miss K finally start eating because I had finally gotten off her back about eating and she could now enjoy her dinner in peace? Had she forgotten that five minutes ago she hated pasties and decided she was hungry enough to eat just about anything? Or did she finally realize that her darling and eternally youthful mother was indeed right to lecture her about eating her vegetables because they are just so gosh darn healthy and tasty? I can't for the life of me guess the answer and Miss K certainly isn't one to discuss the motives behind her actions so she's absolutely no help to me right now.

I have decided for now not to look a gift horse in the mouth and simply celebrated the fact that she went to bed with a tummy full of (mostly) healthy food. Now all I can do is prepare myself for the next episode of "I'm two and I know what I want, and I want it NOW" As long as she doesn't look at me like this again I can overcome anything...

You would think after two years I'd have an easier time saying no to this face. It never gets easier.

Welcome to the temper trap

So right now I am sitting in a living room crowded with people. The adults are having a Coke bottle fight, and the children are quietly entertaining themselves with empty nappy boxes and cardboard books. For some this chaos would be overwhelming, but in this house it is normal.

I am back ladies and gentleman!! Did you all miss me? because I missed the hell out of all of you. We finally have a fully functioning internet connection again so I am back in the 21st century. So much has happened recently that I don't know where to begin.

Miss K had a rare opportunity to spend time with her Nonna at the end of last month, as I decided after 18 months of zero contact that I would finally make the two and a half hour trip to her place for a weekend of Italian food and loud conversations. Miss K warmed to Nonna immediately and the two of them had a wonderful time together. Nonna even taught us how to make tomato sauce from scratch, as our visit coincided with tomato day. Miss K also had her first visit to the beach where she got to discover the joys of jumping in the waves and collecting shells. She even got buried in the sand thanks to yours truly, because I feel it isn't a real trip to the beach until you have sand in absolutely every crevice possible.

More on Miss K, we had a return visit to the optometrist last month as well, and while her eyes are getting stronger, he still isn't happy with her lazy eye, so she now has to wear an eye patch for an hour each day to speed things up. We have turned this into a game, and every day both Miss K and I are transformed into pirates, and we do lots of piratey things like watch TV or make nature collages. (Hey she's two, she doesn't know what real pirates do).

The other real big news with Miss K is the full arrival of a terrible two year old. And a month early too. While Miss K has had her bad days in the past, complete with the occasional temper tantrum and a stubborn refusal to change her mind, the past few weeks since we have returned from Nonna's house have been full of some of the hardest moments I have ever had as a mum. From smacking anyone and everyone who displeases her to screaming the house down when she doesn't get her own way, my beautiful, easy going baby has been replaced by a wildcat. At first I was fairly easy on her, given that she did need four days to recover from our visit to Melbourne, but when she had recovered finally, and the mood swings still hadn't disappeared I needed to become the bad guy and sit on my daughter each and every time she tried to pull her nonsense. (Metaphorically of course, I would never condone really using your children as furniture.) One of the drawbacks of having a baby that is part Italian is that her temper is quick and fierce, and her screams can make the ear drums of death metal rockers bleed. But while I can see a very long road ahead of us, I am quickly learning how to diffuse potentially lethal situations, and more often than not, I see my sunny little girl instead of a hellion.

Miss K's attempt to put her hands on her hips. This is the first sign that she isn't happy. 

Well a stacks on has just been initiated at the other end of the lounge room, and I have the sudden urge to jump on top of a pile of adults and children. It's good to be back.

Dear diary the piggy bank edition

Hello again my lovely readers, I am back again. I know I keep disappearing off the radar for too long at a time, but this time I had a really good reason. Or my big sister did anyway and I just went out in sympathy.

So this week was pretty boring until Friday night. Mum and I were sitting quietly in our lounge room watching telly when we got a call from my big sister saying that my nephew had swallowed a coin and it was now stuck in his throat. Well mum and my baby sister rushed to their house to help in any way they could, and came back with my niece while my sister and her husband rushed my nephew to the after hours medical centre. From here they were directed to the emergency ward at the hospital, and from there after a restless night they were sent to a hospital in Melbourne so my nephew could have surgery to have the coin removed. All three of them returned yesterday afternoon looking very exhausted. My nephew got to keep the coin once they removed it (in a specimen jar of course because after 2 days in his throat it's pretty yuck) and he has x-ray pictures of his throat complete with coin as a memento of his adventure. He has also gained the nickname piggy bank for his newly discovered way of storing coins.

Everyone has of course been pretty stressed and on edge around here lately as we all sat around in mum's lounge room waiting for another phone call updating us on his progress, and poor Miss K was pretty stressed by last night. Of course that didn't stop her from creating some new art work for me to clean up. While putting her to bed last night I found two new drawings in our kitchen. One on the pantry door and the other on the lino. Mum later found a third drawing in a plastic bowl. So Miss K has cleverly discovered that while I have said time and time again that I don't want her drawing on the furniture in the lounge room, I never said anything about the kitchen. Plus she is allowed to wander through the kitchen whenever she wants as long as she stays away from the rubbish bin and the stove so the whole room is just a blank canvas waiting for her to come and decorate it. I am now trying to figure out how to find all the pencils and crayons in the house that she has stashed in her various hiding places and keep them in the lounge room where I can watch her like a hawk.

Of course the big thing that comes with Miss K getting stressed is the massive temper tantrums, which only serve to remind me that the terrible twos are well and truly on their way. To be followed shortly after by the terrible threes which I have it on good authority are much worse. My patience is being tested already on a daily basis so I could just cry every time I remember I have another two and a half years of this sort of behavior to get through still.Luckily for me Miss K's mood switches on a dime right now so usually a tantrum never lasts for more than a minute then my sweet baby girl comes back.

Well that's it for another week I guess, I'm off to go dance with Miss K. Stay awesome my lovely readers and I'll be back on Wednesday with the final update for my current 30 day cleaning challenge.

Like nailing jelly to a wall

This is Miss K's bedroom when it is clean

It's so pretty

And this is Miss K's bedroom ten minutes after I clean it.

AAAARGH!!!!!!

I let her trash her room like this because it gives me ten minutes of peace and quiet to enjoy a cup of coffee, or just have an entire conversation without having to use the word no once. There are times when I don't even know why I bother cleaning it up at the end of the day, as Miss K certainly never seems to appreciate the effort, and it appears that she prefers it dirty anyway. This is just one of the futile fights that Miss K and I have on a regular basis at the moment. We fight a lot at the moment. She questions the absoluteness of my authority over her, and I question her need to push my buttons all the time. 

I know this is just the precursor to the terrible twos, but it begs the question, how terrible will the terrible twos get given that we have world war three in our house on a daily basis already. Miss K seems to take the word no as a challenge, and loves it when my back is turned for five seconds, because that is a big enough window to get into a lot of things that she knows she's not meant to. She's not stupid either, she knows she's not allowed to hit the television, or eat pencils, but she does it anyway. And then when I hit the roof and start yelling I'm the monster for not letting her run riot. 

I'm becoming an expert on ignoring temper tantrums, but instead of having the desired effect of making her stop screaming, right now it makes her scream even louder, I'm not sure if she thinks I can't hear her properly the first time, but she's determined to let me know she's not happy and I'm meant to be doing something about it. I have on several occasions tried changing tactics and crying with her, but that doesn't work either, and I end up looking just as immature as the baby, but without the adorable chubby face to balance things out. 

Luckily for me the tantrums never last long and Miss K is always quick to forgive and forget if given the proper distractions, and then life goes back to normal. It also has the added bonus of making me appreciate the good times even more.