3, 3 Buzz, Buzz

It is trendy, when writing a post about your kids, to refer to the age of your kid and refer to it in the third person and expound about how horrible this particular age is.

I have resisted writing these kinds of posts.

One, I don’t like the idea of being trendy.  I didn’t buy Crocs until this summer and even when I did, I bought the ballet flat looking kind, not the kind that make your feet look like some kind of modern art museum.  I don’t have an I phone or an I pad (okay, mostly cause I can not afford an I pad),nor do I download anything onto an I pod and listen to it while I “work out”.  I resist trends not because I am too cool (cause if you’ve met me, you know that isn’t true) but because it all just takes too much energy.

But I can no longer resist writing this post.

I have a three year old. 

And just in case you are listening 3, you are really getting on my nerves.

I love my daughter.

I am not a fan of three.

Sometimes my husband and I, as we pass each other while one takes out the garbage and the other is wiping someone’s dirty poopy butt, will quip, “don’t you just love this age?”  And the other will retort “I just LOVE this age!”  Then one of us laughs while the other, who is usually the one neck deep in 3! at that moment, usually does not.

3! came early to our house.

You know 3! 3! insists she can do it herself, then dissolves into tears because she “can’t do ANYTHING!”  3! Is very sweet at preschool.  While whining about needing to eat ice cream for breakfast and then asked if she speaks like this to her teachers at school, 3! looks genuinely horrified.  NO!  3! declares.  There’s no whining at school!  3! decides she is too stubborn to blow her nose, so walks around with snot literally bubbling out of her nose and acts as if you are Joan Crawford when you try to come at her with a Kleenex. 

Perhaps 3! is so challenging because you are out of the magical Black Forest that is babyhood and are now called on to really get in to the nitty gritty of socializing a person before she or he goes on to become a homicidal maniac.  Because we’ve all met kids who kinda hang out around 3! for too long.  Chances are one of your friends has one of those kinds of kids.  That’ll never be ME! You say when you watch your college friend who used to do a mean jello shot be reduced to pleading with her offspring to please put on his shoes or else Santa and the Easter Bunny and even Christopher Columbus will never ever come and bring presents again.  Who’s Christopher Columbus well just you keep this up and you’ll find out who Christopher Columbus is and just put on your freakin shoes because I said so that’s all you need to know!

What is exciting about 3! is that we are watching this tiny being become a person, with likes and dislikes, with preferences and strange aversions.

Our 3! has decided she will only wear skirts and dresses.  This means no pants, no jeans, no sleepers, no pajamas with bottoms (unless they have ruffles, but that is a whole other post entirely).  This also means no sneakers or shoes that are not ballet flats. Because, of course, those go with the skirts. 

Sometimes these skirt ensembles will be accompanied by a costume.  This could be a pair if fairy wings or, as was the case last week during grocery shopping, a fuzzy bee costume.  She sat in the car shaped cart wearing it.  If I was stopped a beat or two too long in an aisle, she would jump out (the safety belt was torn off.  Trust me, I tried to strap her in there) and yell “I’m buzzing, I’m buzzing, I gonna STING YOU!” 

One fellow customer found this delightful.  He was one of those fellow customers who comes in around the same time you do and you just can’t shake.  They’re with you near the lettuce, in front of the juices, beside the dairy case.  Usually I feel badly for those people, having to be subjected to my very loud grocery goings.  But this guy ate it up.  “There’s that BEE!”  “Oh, don’t sting us, BEE!”

But what often usurps the excitement of watching someone come into being, is the fact that 3! is often irrational, demanding, rude, and annoying.

“It’s hard because you’re socializing a person from scratch,” is what my mom has pointed out.  And unlike two years previous, when you’re just so charmed by anything the little darling does, you think to yourself, this could be the moment when it all goes down hill and I raise a brat.

And often, that is what 3! seems like.

Let me repeatL we love our daughter.

But 3! is kicking my ass.  3! Is stinging us over and over and it’s lucky she is so cute doing it.