Glitter Infusion of the Crazy Three’s

Pumpkin is far and away so different than the kind of kiddo that The Princess was (and it’s been like that every step of the way – while The Princess was sleeping through the night by eight weeks of age, Pumpkin still remains a wakeful sleeper – even now, at three and a half, it’s not uncommon for her to wake up at least once each night. Ugh). While The Princess definitely had her willful moments, Pumpkin is by far more stubborn, more defiant.

Part of it is the whole “being three” thing. I laugh now how I was petrified of the “terrible two’s”. Two ain’t nothin’. Three (even for my oldest kiddo) has been worse, and though I was lucky enough to forget about it – much like you forget the pain of childbirth – there are days when Pumpkin reminds me of the joys of having a three year old.

Yesterday, that joy came in the form of an incident report when I picked her up from preschool. They had recently “promoted” her to the four year old room (though she won’t be four for another several months) and yesterday was her very first day in that room – though she had visited them several times before over the past few weeks. Her visits had gone really well, so I was shocked to see an incident report paper clipped to her folder on her cubby. I picked it up: “Pumpkin dumped out a jar of glitter. We put her in time out and talked to her about it.” Then there was a follow up: “Should we be making her take a nap?” Um – YES. Turns out, Pumpkin didn’t want to take her nap. She wanted to play. She wanted to play now. She wanted to play with this bottle of glitter. No? Okay, well, this bottle of glitter is on the carpet now. Ugh.

Pumpkin is in that other lovely three stage – growing out of her nap – and though she hates taking one, when she doesn’t, you sure know it. I talked to her teacher, we came up with a strategy and here’s hoping that this is the last of THAT. I guess with this all is somewhat of a sense of relief – I mean, I’d so much rather get an incident report for glitter-spilling versus biting or hitting other kids. But it’s still no fun.