It’s almost 6am and I’m up with Lydia watching Finding Nemo. She’s been waking up really early for the last week or so, but I much prefer this to the 3am wake-up calls she’s been giving us. I’d rather have her waking up early than having the stupid tantrums and rudeness that we’ve had to put up with recently too.

She was absolutely hideous yesterday just because she wanted a bag of crisps. I don’t know if she’s picking up things from the other children at Nursery, but she’s been getting so rude and arrogant. We have to keep reminding her to use her manners which we don’t usually have to do, sometimes with her flat-out refusing to say “please” or “thank you”. In which case, I just put back whatever it is that she wanted until she’s polite about it.

Anyway, yesterday she wanted a bag of crisps on the way home from Nursery, but when she couldn’t get them straight away she threw a huge tantrum in the shop. Dave said that she was screaming at the top of her lungs and kept running away. He just wanted to get her home, so he put her on his shoulders and walked home. She screamed, kicked and scratched at him all the way home. By the time they get home, she’d got herself into such a state that she was hiccupping, but still screaming. I find out what’s wrong and she thinks that she can get me to give her crisps instead of Dave. I tell her no as well and she went absolutely nuts!

We put her upstairs in her bedroom until she calms down. For about 15 minutes all we can hear is screaming and things being thrown around the room. When the noise stops, I go in the room to her and the whole floor is literally covered in her toys and books. There is absolutely nothing left on tables or shelves. So I sit down on her bed, ask her if she’s finished now and she nods at me. She then has the cheek to say that she wants to go downstairs to play and grabs a random handful of toys. I say “No. We’re going downstairs so you can say sorry to your Dad, then you’re helping me tidy up this mess”. She refuses so I tell her that she can stay up in her room a little longer then, which she starts whinging at. I repeat what I said to her and after the third time (and last time, I tell her), she calms down and agrees.

As soon as she gets downstairs though, she goes nuts again and demands crisps Back up the stairs we go! I sit on her bed again and ignore her until she calms down the say that she can help me to tidy up. She’s reluctant at first, but she gets into it after a while because I make it into a ‘teamwork’ type thing. I’m still doing most of the work, but as long as she’s trying, I’m happy. I had to ask Dave to take over after a while as I had to get ready for work, but it was good to get her calmed down before I had to go. Apparently she was all lovey-dovey while I was at work, telling Dave she loved him, saying “No shouting now. No more shouting is there?” and saying sorry.

Hopefully we won’t have to go through all this again today!