Seriously, Why Did Nobody Tell Me What 4 Was Like???

I have friends with kids older than mine, and all I've been hearing for the past year or so was how amazing kids are when they turn 4.  They used phrases like "breath of fresh air" and "you can reason with them" and all those good things that made me imagine 4 was going to be the best thing ever.  Well, I am here to tell you, THEY LIED.  For real.  3 was cake compared to 4.  CAKE!  And 2?  2 is just laughable.  Charlotte has very (very very) big tantrums that involve throwing herself on the floor wherever we are and I'm starting to find it downright cute in comparison to 4.

Ok, maybe I'm being a little overdramatic here, but I think you get my point.  Maya has recently figured out what phrases and tones get under my skin, what she can say to Charlotte to make her come running to me crying, and how to make Michael go out into the garage by himself, shut the door, and yell as loud as possible (which apparently doesn't help).  Seems that her favorite thing to do these days is to tell me I'm wrong and mean and I DIDN'T GIVE HER A NAPKIN IN HER LUNCH OMG I AM THE WORST MOTHER IN THE WORLD!  Did you know that she wanted her macaroni on a plate and not in a bowl?  Seriously, how could you NOT know that???  You must be intentionally trying to ruin her life.

It's really getting to the point where I can remain calm through the yelling (sometimes, at least) because it is just.so.ridiculous.  I remind her of the consequences of her actions, tell her that she can yell and scream if she needs to but she has to do it somewhere that it isn't interfering with whatever other people are doing, remove her from the situation, and walk away.  *Usually* she will calm down after a bit, come back into wherever we are, talk about it and we move on with our day.  But today?  Well, as you can read above, I was super mean and didn't give her a napkin to put in her lunch bag for preschool and that was the final straw.  After lots of yelling (from her), I told her that she needed to sit on the couch and think about how her tone was making Charlotte and I feel, she said screamed, "but I don't know how to think!"  I will spare you all the details, but will just say that it got so ridiculous that she stayed home from preschool because I wasn't about to subject other kids or adults to the crazies.  Tonight when Michael got home, we had a sit-down talk with her wherein we discussed what had happened.  She was surprisingly remorseful for how it had all gone down, but then at one point when we were trying to figure out what had happened to cause such big feelings, she said, "today was just really complicated" lol.

She did tell me tonight that tomorrow she will be a good listener and will be nice all day.  I hope she's right :D  Oh, and she took a 2 hour nap today (!!!) so that seems to have helped a bit :)

Pictures (random):

 

Kieran looks like he got caught doing something he shouldn't be!