3 year olds are fun...when you don't want to kill them.

I babysat my niece the other day. I shouldn't have, because I'm not supposed to lift anything more than 10 pounds, and a healthy 3 year old weighs at least, what? 5 or 6 hundred pounds, I'm guessing. Or, you know, around 25 pounds maybe, for those who are not subjective. Anyway, my sister is sick, so I took the kid.

Did you ever notice that when a 3 year old thinks she's in trouble she becomes the most obstinate, stubborn and objectionable child in the world? My 3 year old was in the bathroom. She had just finished going potty and we had finished an argument of who was going to wipe her. I lost. I thought she should be able to do it (after all it was just pee) and her excuse as to why she couldn't was "I don' wanna! Because!" which, when you're 3 makes sense. So after washing my hands, I went back out to the kitchen to stir the soup, because that's what I do when I've been bested by 3 a year old. Suddenly there was a crash of the most unimpressive sort. I recognized the sound of my hair dryer falling off the counter top, because I'd caused it so many times myself. I rounded the corner in a hurry though, thinking she may have hurt herself. There she stood, in all her Dora the Explorer underwear glory, and she said... "I was trying to push it back up."

Uh huh. That's what she was doing.

I told her to get out of the bathroom. And wouldn't you know it, suddenly the bathroom was Disneyland, Cinderella's castle, and Baskin Robins all wrapped up together: it was her most favorite place in the world and she decided that she did NOT want to leave it. I had to physically pick the child up (and oh, my abused abdominal muscles loved that) along with her jeans and take her into the living room. She was screaming the whole way as if I was flaying her with razor blades. A thought which crossed my mind but which I did not do. I (forcefully, admittedly) put her jeans on her, and it's amazing what strength a child of 3 can command to her knees. If she don't wan' 'em to unbend, they ain't gonna unbend. But I got the jeans on her (Yay me, 30 years older and stronger. How sad is it that I count this as a victory?) and then I plopped her down on the couch, turned off the TV (we were watching Disney, so it wasn't all that painful for me) and told her she was in time out. She screamed and cried. Cried and screamed. At one point I was afraid for my upholstery thinking she was going to puke on my couch. THAT would have upset me. Eventually though, she hiccupped to a stop and started breathing again. After about 5 minutes of quiet I asked her is she was done. She said yes and asked if she could get off the couch. I said yes. She was immediately all smiles and she dug in the bag that her mom had packed. She came out with something called "Floam", and she proceeded to smear it all over my apartment with laughter and something akin to naked glee. This was her revenge, I'm sure of it.