This is a new.... uh.... milestone

This morning my daughter told me that she hated me.... OK, so I was trying to get her to wash her hands after squooshing a spider (Yay! Parker - 1, Spiders - 0 but there are certainly more of them than there are of her). But, really, does this really merit a "hate"?

So she got a time-out, and she screamed and cried, although she did sit in the time-out. Then we had a lovely snuggle, and looked at old pictures of when she was little, cute, and immobile.

Her behavior continues to be a problem on Fridays and the weekends - she picks up some pretty bad habits at daycare, because the daycare provider's son is a PUNK-ASS and future white trash and I just can't stand his behavior. My little blank slate - who is not perfect, I'm not that blind - goes there four days a week, then comes home and is a carbon-copy of him: she talks back, she grunts and demands things, she screams at us, she says no and runs away. I also am aware that this is typical 2-1/2 year old behavior. G and I tell her that that behavior is not acceptible: she needs to ask us using her words and her manners, and not cry and have tantrums. She is praised and applauded when she does things right, and we try to ignore and/or explain why the bad things are not ok. By Sunday, she is fine, and back to being pleasant, well-rested, and using her manners (for the most part), then it starts all over again on Monday.

I know this is a phase, and what she is learning is that in certain places, certain behavior is acceptable, and in other places it is not at all ok. There is a lesson here. She will act differently with other people than she acts with me. It's the trade-off of having her go to daycare (that said, it is absolutely necessary that she go to daycare, we can't have one of us work and the other be a stay-at-home-parent). I just have to remember to breathe, remember that she is just 2-1/2, and remember that she is still my sweet girl. She'll grow out of it, eventually.

(She's also getting out of her crib: this morning when she heard us awake and talking, she came in and said "good morning!". That was weird. She was out of bed before we were.)