To be 2 1/2

So I was going to call this post to be a toddler...but is Olivia still a toddler? I don't know where you draw the line with all the titles of children. Babycenter.com does it this way "newborn, baby, toddler and then preschooler". Those emails I get but no longer read are titled "your pre-schooler this week"...the smartass in me thinks...aren't all those titles technically preschoolers? Oh well I guess it's easier to just call her 2 1/2...even though technically she isn't half until the 9th of September...and yes that matters to me!

Oh my Olivia girl! She is a nutcase these days. Nutty can mean funny and crazy and both those terms seem to apply to her, and I don't mean crazy as in amusing. I mean crazy as in crazy! So the other day as I complained of her bi-polarness and terrible twos my sister in law Alyssa sent me this video.



Which I found hilarious and strangely accurate..."A strange evil force grips the child transforming him into a deranged destructive monster making him capable of unspeakable horrors". Ha ha.

Besides that it seems like being 2 1/2 is like being in a constant state of frustration...on both ends, for both mother and child. Frustration for me because Olivia is like happy one minute and completely hysterical the next. Olivia seems like she is frustrated because she has the mind to do whatever she wants but she isn't allowed to or actually isn't capable to follow through. She seems frustrated a lot. She can't get one of her toy people into the toy bus and it's immediately a huge dramatic affair. Throw yourself on the floor in tears. She is asking to do something we can't at the moment do and she runs off to her room blubbering on and on in mostly unintelligible phrases. She tells me "it's not fair" at least 3 times a day or will scold me with such phrases as "don't talk like that to me Mommy, it's not a nice thing to say". This comes when I mention bedtime or naptime. She picked up that phrase from me...when she gets sassy I tell her not to talk to me that way. Or when she has learned some less than desirable words from Daddy or occasionally Mommy and I tell her "don't say those words, they aren't nice things to say". She apparently equates bedtime and naptimes with me being sassy or using a 4 letter word...nice!

So my life these days is a whirlwind of emotions...as if I don't have enough of my own emotions now I get to deal with the always irrational emotional reactions of a 2 year old. Maybe a lot of this is normal...but she really seems to have a flair for the theatrical productions you might call a tantrum. Usually she gets mad at me for one thing or another and starts wailing like a tea kettle. I respond to this by telling her if she is going to be sad she has to go be sad in her room. So she storms off, slams the door and stays in there long enough to eventually calm down. Sometimes this takes 2 minutes, sometimes it takes 20. Sometimes I go check on her and she will tell me "I'm still sad Mommy, please go away"...well at least she's polite about it. Then she will come out and tell me "I'm not sad anymore Mommy, I happy". And we are all roses and daises until the next inevitable injustice in her little mind.

This sounds amusing and you know a lot of the time it is...but it is always wearing!!! And I think if she is like this now at 2...I can only imagine what the teenage years will bring...oh boy!