Letting the terrorist win

Aw, sleeping baby. Adorable, right? Young Margaret actually has it out for me (and herself) these days. We've been having several power struggles where she looks right at me and does something she's not supposed to, like hitting or running into the street. I think it's a ploy for attention so I need to think about how best to address it. While she doesn't like being told "no" by everyone in the house, she definitely gets attention by it so I need to shift the dialogue and the attention to catching her doing something good. That has to exist, right? Right?

She's back to sleeping in the crib...for now. I am going to further remove everything interesting from the room and then try again. I initially thought this weekend, but maybe I'll wait a couple more weeks. She's also very interested in potty training right now (my girl went no. 1 and no. 2 on the toilet this morning!) so I might take one huge milestone at a time.

Got willful?

The last couple of months, I've really been enjoying the kids. We've had a nice run of them playing nicely together, handling school/daycare well, more or less following instructions and sleeping somewhat decently. And then I got a two year old. Seriously, my darling angel baby has turned into a terror seemingly overnight. How did I forget this stage? It's like she's a new walker again somehow.

Here at the classic traits:

• Throwing things on purpose.
• Throwing things and then stepping on them for good measure.
• Throwing her dinner.
• Stepping on her dinner once it hits the floor.
• Pouring her juice on the floor.
• Stepping in it for good measure.
• Putting toilet paper in the toilet.
• Turning on the water.
• Pouring it on the floor.
• Stepping in it for good measure.
• Running away from me in public.
• Running away from me INTO THE STREET.

Today she also managed to take off her diaper when she was supposed to be napping, pooping and throwing it on the floor. Fortunately she was in her crib so she couldn't step on it for good measure.

I've decided it's time to crack down. We're doing time outs now (I think she had five this afternoon, including when she ran away from me at the grocery store parking lot. And laughed. I could have strangled her I was so scared. And mad.) I figure I need to try to instill some discipline now or it's just going to get worse. Groan. I don't like that part! And what happened to my precious darling angel baby? Sigh.

Oh, and completely unrelated, I saw (500) Days of Summer. It was good. Bjorn watched the second half and liked it -- high praise since it's a teen/twentish romantic comedy.