What happened to my perfect little angel?

Over the weekend a switch of some kind turned in her head, and she became a holy terror. Anything you ask her to do, she is guaranteed to do the opposite. Every little thing becomes the most difficult, frustrating thing in the world. Anything she can throw or knock over, she does, all looking you right in the eye with a little mischievous grin on her face, daring you to do anything about it. She has 15 minute hysterical crying fits when she doesn’t get her way. Keep in mind, this is the girl who will make herself puke if she gets too upset. And this is a girl with a lot of opinions too, not just on what she should wear, but on what you should wear, where you should sit, if you should take your shoes off or leave them on, etc. And God help you if you don’t do exactly as she says. It’s not like it was a surprise, per say. Obviously you hear all the stories about how difficult kids her age are. But the swiftness of the change was surprising.

One interesting aspect of it is bargaining. She has become a master staller and she tries to make deals with you. Like, if you tell her it is time to put her shoes on and she doesn’t want to, she will immediately start talking about how much she wants to eat. She knows we try to get her to eat all the time, so she thinks this will work as a diversion. She understands bargains that go the other way too, since the only way Sara could get her into the cart at the grocery store was to say, “Evie, if they ask me if you can have a cookie, do you want to say yes?” after which she became a perfect angel. Unfortnately, she didn’t go for my bargin of “be good or I’ll publish nasty things about you on the Internet”, hence this post.

It has only been about 3 days of this and I just can’t see how we can make it another 3 or 4 months.

It’s not all rough times though, there were a few highlights over the weekend.

• Saying “Nala, that is not very nice!” when Nala nipped her hand for being too in her face.
• Making up a noise for raccoons that sounds like “da da da da da” when she didn’t know what sort of noise they made.
• “Smiling” on command by like squinching up her eyes and doing a sort of exaggerated face stretching with her bottom teeth sticking out.

In completely unrelated news, I had the most delicious smelling shower this morning! New shampoo you ask? No sir, baking bread! Sara programmed the bread machine last night so that it would finish the loaf by the time we woke up this morning. Around 3 a.m. Sara moved the bread machine to the bathroom in hopes that the “whirrrr whirrrr whirrrr” of the kneading mechanism would be quieter with the bathroom door shut and the fan on. So right about the time I was stepping into the shower a delicious smelling loaf of bread was baking on the counter about a foot away. Needless to say, my stomach was rumbling.

I’m contemplating inventing a combination bread machine / shower water heater that would provide you with an on-demand hot shower and delicious loaf of bread. The only thing I’m missing is a catchy name. Suggestions?