What I want to say right now is that I am a very patient, happy and organized mother of a preschooler. Instead I'll say this:
Nurturing a three year old is like living in a suspended state of Bizarro world.
It's intense. It's mind cracking. It's hilarious.
When people speak of the "inner child", they're speaking of when they were 3-4 years old. Being a three year old means:
Learning to joke around.
Calling your spiral pasta a "tornado" and having it run around your plate.
Learning the real name of things and then choosing to call it something else. Currently I respond to the name "Mister Emily" because my daughter learned my first name.
Talking ad nauseam about bodily functions. Poops. Boogers. Eating the aforementioned. Singing about the aforementioned.
The need to share their negative feelings loudly. Particularly the word "no" followed by running.
The ability to make emotional transitions in a very speedy fashion. "I DO IT MYSELLLLLFFF" is often followed by a more demure and faint "love-you-mommy".
It's at this age where children have total memory recall on most of the bad things you do and two of the good things you do. My children have started a new game called "Time Out" in which one plays the mommy and the other pretends to be upset while she is placed in time out. I have mixed feelings about this game.
At this age, there isn't a whole lot of gender differentiation. Children are whirlwind of emotional and physical possibilities.
Climbing on bookcases.
Hanging from bookcases.
Using books to build a tower to climb in order to reach the bookcases.
If it weren't for gender specific clothing or hair ties, we wouldn't know which gender we were raising. We really wouldn't.
I don't dislike this age. I mostly find myself confused with the mind-dizzying life that is running around my feet like a puppy. I lose my train of thought a lot, particularly when my daughter screams for lollipops. Which she does. A lot.
Today something particularly wonderful happened and it was so amazing that it erased the chaos of this morning. Eve and I began baking cookies and my sweet Evey was able to correctly use the sifter. I showed her a little trick with the sifter... the kind that has the handle that twirls around... and my busy whirlwind of a daughter took the sifter deftly in her little hands and used it correctly.
Shortly after I brought out the vanilla extract and she said, "Waz that, Mom? Banilla?"
I nearly dropped the bottle.
She knows ingredients!
I mean, of course she does. We make cookies almost 2-3 times a week to keep her little hands busy and all this time I thought she was just making chaos but in that little noggin of hers electrical charges were firing off and causing her to remember "Banilla" and how to sift flour.
Sweet mercy, I'm happy.