I see what people mean....

...when they say that the threes can actually be worse than the terrible twos. Grant still has a month before his birthday, but we've noticed some definite changes.....he's never been easy by any means, but I think the challenges are changing a bit.

I'll give an example of something that's happened over and over in our house recently. Two nights ago Grant was playing with play-doh and he ended up sticking one of his cars into it. He pretended like it was getting buried in snow, etc. And we let him do it, but afterwards we realized that play-doh doesn't come out of racecar wheels very easily. So yesterday morning Grant tried to do the same thing. I went over to him and explained that it made a big mess last night, so he'd just have to play with the play-doh by itself. He didn't like that answer......and there was no talking any sense with him. Every time I tried to explain, he'd just protest and say, "but I wanna.....blah blah blah," never once stopping to actually listen to me. After five or six times, I lost my temper and just started screaming at him, basically. Only then did he actually quiet down and do what I asked.

Instead of just crying or laying on the floor when I tell him something he doesn't like to hear (which is what he'd do six months ago), now he's actually capable of arguing with me.....which I can tell is going to test my patience like crazy! Because even though he can talk and tell me what he wants, he's still not old enough to understand why he can't always do things his way. He just can't reason well enough yet.

At least it makes me feel better (a little!) that Dean has the same issue. Tonight in the bath Dean was correcting Grant time after time, and he lost his patience with him too. Grant just gets so involved in what he's doing, and it's almost like his ears don't even work. We have to repeat things five times (each time getting successively louder) until he obeys! So we're trying to just spank him on the spot when he ignores (or argues with) us.....that or take away whatever is causing the fuss.

But......Grant has also said some funny things the past couple of days:

- Last night he looked at me right in the eyes and told me, "you're my sister."
- Today he came and sat in my lap and told me, "I'm so proud of you."
- Also last night he tried on a zip-up hoodie that I bought for him. He wore it for a minute, then said, "this is a really cool sweater." He loves calling things "really cool."
- Today he and Drew had a lot of fun playing. I was in the hallway while the boys were playing in the guest room, and Grant said, "look, Mommy. Drew likes to bite me." Sure enough, he was asking Drew to bite him. And Drew would lean over and bite his shoulder/head/back, then they'd both laugh!