No NO No

Thirty five minutes of sheer tantrum this morning.

Putting on a bib with breakfast has never been a problem before. Suddenly it was. It was a dealbreaker, a total infringement of everything F held dear and good. How dare we? How could we? It was just too much.

V ended up putting F in her room to cool off for a bit. After five mintes, she screamed slowly back into view round the edge of the door, pushing a bag of old clothes in front of her. Look! she seemed to say. Look how angry I am! I'm so angry, I'm pushing this bag of old clothes! YOU MADE ME DO THIS!

She managed to sustain this level of fury for half an hour more before gradually deciding that it had never really happened. She refused to back down from her stance on bibs, or stop crying when reasoned with, but we found common ground in toy cars eventually. Then when she realised she was still hungry, breakfast was achieved with total normalcy, including happy bib use. All friends again now.

She's throwing between one and three of these meltdowns a day, although this was the longest one with the least provocation so far. It's not easy for her, I guess. She can say what she wants and has moods and opinions, and it's frustrating her when we don't go along with these for intelligible reasons.

Same goes for us, though. Why did she take against the bib this morning? No idea. Why can't I help her rebuild the demolished block tower she's just asked me to help make? No idea. Why isn't this apple quite right? No idea. Maybe she's just so infuriated with so many things, these straws are shattering the spine of the next queued camel when it becomes available.

So "yes"becomes "YESH!", "no" becomes "NOOA!", and her eyes screw up and her face goes red and her cheeks puff out like some Shogunate era wind god and we're just going to have to weather the storm until she learns how to explain herself better. Or ask nicely, because that might also work.

Ha. In about ten years, I'm sure this will all seem like a beautiful memory.