Magoo is Three-ish

Something happened to Magoo on his third birthday. As he collapsed into an exhausted coma on my lap after a fun-filled day at Disneyland and slept sweetly through the singing and the candles and the cake, some crazy switch of three-ish mischief flipped on in his head. He woke up a new man and he hasn't been the same since.

Some things are the same. His feet are still fat. His hair is still fluffy. He still likes to cuddle sometimes, but he wants to do everything on his terms. If I ask for a cuddle, he's not so into it. He'd rather cuddle with one of my legs while I'm doing yoga in the living room or cuddle with bursts of energy when he's supposed to be sleeping. He also likes to direct the cuddling. "Now Mommy. You kiss my nose LIKE ISSS! No! Not like a-at! LIKE ISS!"

So I keep kissing him until I get it right. I don't mind. What I do mind is days like yesterday, days when I sort of stare at him in shock and awe, only to have Dan come home and say, "Why did you let him get away with all of that?" and all I can say is, "Yeah."

Yesterday morning he painted the counter top with peanut butter. An hour later I was on the phone with tech support for my computer when Laylee came running into the room screaming. It seems that Magoo had gotten hold of the contents of his diaper and was chasing her around the room like a poop monster.

At the park later I had to carry him to the car in a football hold kicking and screaming when it was time to go home. He was kicking and screaming on the outside. I was doing it on the inside. As I set him down to open the car door, he ran back to the park and it took me 10 minutes to chase him down. He laughed as I chased and urged him to come back in my most serious of serious voices. I assured him that we would not be coming back to the park when we came for next week's farmer's market.

At home he did his best to get on Laylee's nerves. It doesn't take much these days. Shooting at her babies with an imaginary bazooka, following her around so close that he nearly knocks her over, or yelling in her face all work fairly well. At dinner, he looked right at me and then shoved a handful of rocks into the half-full milk jug. While he was in time-out for that little stunt, he snuck a bag of Swedish fish he'd been asking for all day and started stuffing his face. Dan was home at this point and when he found Magoo chowing down on his illicit stash, he picked him up and took him straight to bed with no story.

The poor kid just wants to be the master of his own destiny, the ruler of our family, and pretty much the boss of the whole world. He's learning, to his chagrin, that he is none of these things, not yet, not until he learns that terrorizing people with poop is a less than acceptable pastime.

Too Cute for So Much Trouble

Sweetly Sleeping

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