Getting High and Sucking Things

SB has been a royal pain in my tucchus lately. I'm not sure if she's nervous because we're putting furniture into storage left and right in the hopes of making our house appear larger so we're more likely to sell it quickly and get a good price, or if she's not feeling well because we both seem to have caught a cold, or if she's just going through a difficult spurt.

She's been blatantly ignoring us, throwing temper tantrums, screaming for effect, and rebelling against her punishments. It's been a trying time, but I probably don't make things any better with my obviously not thought-out comments and advice.

SB sometimes sucks her thumb in her bed, which we can't really do anything about. But we have strict rules about not sucking her thumb when she's out and about, or sitting on the couch, or anywhere except in her bed. Sometimes she really wants to suck her thumb, and says "Mommy, I need something in my mouth." I usually try to distract her by getting her to do something with her hands, like draw or paint.

The other day, she told me "Mommy, I need to suck on something." I was in the middle of doing something so I couldn't really distract her at that point so I had to use another Mom Tactic: the Big Girl argument. Every 3-year old wants to be a Big Girl. So when I want SB to do something, or not do something, I liken her desired actions to whether a Big Girl would do it.

Unfortunately, in this case, my telling her that "Big Girls don't suck on things" was not the best, or most honest approach to getting her behavior to change.

Fast forward to yesterday, when SB took me into her room to show me/brag about how she moved a chair (ROCKING CHAIR) over to in front of her book case and climbed on both to try to reach a doll on a high shelf on the wall. The only reason she was telling me all this was because she still wasn't able to reach the doll.

Of course, my first reaction was to warn her how dangerous it was to climb onto her bookshelf like that, and that she could fall and get "big booboos" (I'm totally into the Mommy Talk these days).

During my lecture, TB entered the room just in time to hear me explain to SB that she shouldn't do that, and "if you want to get high, ask Mommy or Daddy."

Yeah. I guess my Mommy Talk needs some work.