Terrible Threes

Madeleine is going through a bit of a stubborn phase.  (Or, depending on how you look at it, an entire stubborn childhood, thus far.)  I remember some terrible battles of the wills with Julia at age 3, so I'm not really surprised that I am suddenly dealing with contrary behavior and refusal to cooperate over the same issues Julia had fought me on (namely, clothes, food, and hairstyles.)

Madeleine climbed into bed with me early this morning, and immediately started asking for things.

MADELEINE: Mama?  Can you get me some BREAKFAST?  I want some pancakes!
ME: We don't have any pancakes right now, honey.

(I know; who ever just HAS pancakes?  You have to actually make them, which I am perfectly capable of doing, and quite enjoy doing, but not while I'm lying in bed at 6:45 am.)

MADELEINE: But Mama.  We could MAKE some!  We have some chocolate chips!
ME: I know we do.  But I don't think we're going to make pancakes this morning.  I can give you a bowl of Trix if you want.
MADELEINE: Mama.  I prefer Life.
ME: Well, we ate all the Life.  But you can have Trix.
MADELEINE: But Mamaaaa!  I don't LIKE Trix!

Madeleine had, in fact, INSISTED that I buy a box of Trix when we were last at the grocery store.  We hadn't even opened the box yet, as we were finishing the box of Life first before opening a new cereal box.  Yet given the choices of a) cooperating with me, or b) recanting her professed desire for Trix in order to be UNCOOPERATIVE with me, of course Madeleine goes with b.

Madeleine then asked if she could go get her outfit from her bedroom.  And this brings us to cooperation issue #2.

MADELEINE: Mama?  Can I go get my outfit from my room?
ME: Sure.  The outfit we picked out is on your floor in your bedroom.  Remember?  The white shirt with pink shorts?
MADELEINE: (bursting into tears) But MAMAAAAA!  You're RUINING my CAMP!

Yesterday was the first day of an afternoon camp program I signed the girls up for.  Madeleine decided to forgo the outfit we had chosen in lieu of her yellow Georgia Aquarium dress with pink dolphins.  Because: "The camp counsellors will think this is the PERFECT dress for camp!  And...when they get to be three like ME, then THEY can wear this dress!"

So, basically, I was ruining her camp because the only way to truly have the perfect camp experience is by wearing a yellow dress with pink dolphins every day.

Many of you blog-readers probably remember the days of Julia picking out a week's worth of outfits to lay across her dresser so that I couldn't possibly exert any control over what she was going to wear.  Madeleine seems to be in a similar phase right now.  Basically, what she wants to wear is anything OTHER than what we had previously agreed upon the night before.  And very often, what she wants to wear is the exact same outfit she wore the day before, that is now dirty and in her laundry basket.

We started a cooperation chart a month ago as a positive reinforcement aid.  For every day that Madeleine puts on her outfit without fuss, she gets a sticker.  When she reaches 25 stickers, we'll go to the toy store and pick out a treat. So far she has:

6 stickers.  6 days out of 30 of agreeably putting on her outfit.  Go Madeleine!  At this rate, it will be roughly another 3 months before she gets her toy.

Battling for control with a 3-year-old.  Fun times.  Been there once, so I know I will survive it, but I can't say I'll miss this stubborn phase when it passes.

Here is the outfit Madeleine wore today.  It's certainly egregious enough to warrant her tears about having to wear it, right?:

WHAT an embarrassing mother I am, making my child dress like that, instead of letting her wear a dirty dress (that she was sitting down in when she accidentally pooped a little in her underwear last night) to camp.

On an entirely unrelated note, thanks to a bunch of questions from Julia on our walk home from camp, I am currently, with great dignity, googling "Do dolphins have vaginas?"

The answer is undoubtedly yes, but Julia was unhappy with my inability to specify for her where, exactly, on the female dolphin's body the vagina lies.  Furthermore, she was skeptical of the whole dolphin vagina idea because:

JULIA: Well, you can't SEE a vagina anywhere when you look at a dolphin!
ME: Well, if you look at a person, you can't immediately see her vagina either, especially if you don't know where on her body to look for it.  It's the same with dolphins.

A few moments later...

MADELEINE: But Mama.  You mean HIS body.  You mean you can't see HIS vagina on HIS body.

Apparently, Madeleine STILL doesn't know the difference between boys and girls.