Major meltdowns

Looks like Rachel got the manual on turning 3 about two months early. She was a whiny, irritating little sh-- today at the Children's Museum, highly embarrassing me in front of Linda and her angelic daughter Devin, who is a week younger than Rachel. Although Linda, to her credit, told me Devin's good behavior was just a public front; she's impossible in private.

Rachel whined and yelled when we tried to leave one room to go to another. She whined and yelled when other kids wanted to play with toys she wanted to play with. At one point she hit my chest and I had to say sternly, "DON'T HIT MOMMY. DON'T EVER HIT MOMMY." She whined and yelled so much at one point -- she actually lay down on the concrete floor to have a full-blown temper tantrum -- that we nearly left for good. "I'll stay with your stuff," Linda said hurriedly as I marched Rachel outside and told her she couldn't scream and yell inside.

Well, of course she did right at the time we were getting ready to leave. I had to stop at Aveda to buy some fragrance for my friend Rachel, in Africa, and as I headed out of the parking lot of the museum I realized I had no idea where my cell phone was, and as I became more frantic looking for it I had less and less patience with Rachel's sobbing -- really, a whole day of her being whiny -- and so finally I pulled into a service driveway at the musem, stopped the car, turned to her in the back and yelled, "SHUT UP!"

See why I'm not going to win any parenting awards today?

About five seconds later I found my cell phone. Then I heard a little voice say quietly, "I love you, Mommy," and I could hear the appeal in Rachel's voice, wondering if Mommy still loved her. I crawled into the seat next to her, said, "I love you too, Rachel. Wanna go home and cuddle? And I'll give you cheddar bunnies..."
"And chocolate goldfish," she sniffled.
"And Teddy grahams," I finished.
Her little tear-stained face nearly broke my heart.

As soon as we started driving, she nodded off. We got to Aveda, I woke her up and she was fine. I fell asleep as I rocked her in the glider before her nap, then we had dinner, and I put her to bed around 9. An hour later she woke up and insisted she wasn't sleepy. She also had another nightmare involving her baby doll -- it was trying to climb back into her stomach.

"Play with me!' she ordered. (That's another annoying habit of hers that I am trying to nip in the bud -- ordering me around like a servant. Reinforces for me why I absolutely hate ill-mannered, bossy children).

"No, Rachel," I explained. "You need to go to sleep because Mommy needs to go to sleep. Mommy's tired."

I made a big ceremony of removing baby doll from her crib and put her to bed.

At least she said, "I love you," as I shut the door. What a day.