The threes

There is nothing in my three and change years of motherhood that could have prepared me for the terrible-awful threes. I think this age makes me crazier than the baby blues. More depressed than the fact that we have no friends (except for one couple that has kids my age). More exhausted than when I was waking up at all hours of the night with Jonas.

Throwing a fit because he doesn't want to  perform
 in the  Mother's Day presentation.

Somewhere between two and three, something went wrong. Or he grew up before my eyes and now all of a sudden he has a mind of his own. He decides if he's tired, not me or the clock. He throws mega-tantrums where I swear the whole house shakes with his screaming. If he's in trouble and sent to his room, he kicks and pounds at the door and then I start to have nightmares of when he's sixteen and punching through walls or something. Remember when I said he was like me? Not Adrian, the relaxed, calm guy who I'm certain I've never actually seen mad. He's never once yelled at me. I can see my teenage self punching through a wall if I was a guy. Thank God I'm not. I really hope he's not a teenage guy version of me someday.

On Mother's Day, my mom and I were sitting at her table enjoying our coffee, and explained how I thought I might be losing my already-gray hair because Gabriel was making me crazy. That he fights me and yells and kicks and hits and screams and ohgodmakeitstop. I thought she would impart on me some infinite mom-wisdom about how it all gets better and give it a few months, but no. She pointed to her grays (dyed, of course) and said that we gave her every single one of them and I had plenty more ahead of me. She also pointed out how it was clear how much we wore her out because with each subsequent child (there were four of us), the rules were more lenient and the consequences less severe.

So, without much help from my mother, it hit me on Sunday night that I need to get crafty. Sneaky sneaky. I need to trick my child into believing that he's calling the shots but really, it's all about manipulation. I have a bachelor's degree in Psychology, I don't know why it took so long for this to dawn on me. Is that awful that I'm playing mind games with my three-year old? Whatever. I got him to nap yesterday without replicating a WWF match or tears.

I'd call that a KO.