Chloe seems to be going through a phase.
Usually when parents say that, they don’t mean a good phase like, “Chloe is going through the ‘giving phase’” or “Chloe is going through the ‘rub my back phase’” or the ‘breakfast in bed phase’.
Chloe is going through the kill-me-in-my-sleep phase.
I didn’t see her act this way, at least not to this degree in her twos, which tells me she is either coming down with tuberculosis and I’m misreading the symptoms or she’s testing us.
She’s always had a strong, independent, borderline illegal personality but this week she has added some extra screaming and a lot of tears when she doesn’t get her way.
Of course we can always depend on her to say unthinkable things like this week when the guy was here putting the stone on the new fireplace and she said, “John is just a loser. He doesn’t even know our names.”
It was only after John left the house to cry in his truck that she said, “I guess John is a cute boy.” Poor John only heard the part when a three year old called him a loser. A comment I’m fairly certain he assumes she was repeating something we had said which is absolutely untrue. That might be right around the time he started placing the stone backwards and with huge, crooked gaps.
It’s the tantrums that are draining me.
When I told her we were going to take a break from tv for a while, explaining that words like “loser” were not acceptable and had come from watching her big sister’s shows, she screamed, “Well I’m going to put a booger on your face!”
I told her comments like those would only keep the tv off even longer and the tissue box a little closer.
Second verse, same as the first.
She had another tantrum because I wouldn’t buy her a dress from the grocery store. A grocery store dress she already owns that hangs next to 357 other grocery store dresses.
Her final meltdown happened at dinner when she began taking her fork, filling it with sweet potatoes, followed by peas and then flinging them wildly like a stainable, vegetable tornado swirling around our kitchen.
I grabbed her hand to keep the fork still and before I could say whatever in that speechless moment I was about to say she screamed an inch from my nose, “WELL DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU?????”
Foiled again.
