A Frustrated Parent's Lament

Olivia is on the cusp of turning 4 years old, and June will turn 3 in early summer. They're both in a phase right now (I sure hope it's just a phase, anyway) that is causing me a significant amount of anguish.

They love their mommy.

Not normally a bad thing, right? But these two knuckleheads take loving their mommy to a whole new level. They want "uppy" all the time (they want the Mrs. to hold them), and they're constantly under her feet to the point of trying to crawl up her legs. Not only have neither of them "cut the cord," but they often both act like they're literally trying to crawl back up into the womb. Each of them says the word "Mommy" no fewer than 113,784 times a day, trying to gain her attention, and they do it over the top of each other. The more tired they get, the clingier they are. The Mrs. tries to make dinner, and she's constantly turning around and nearly falling over one of them. The Mrs. tries to sit on the couch and relax for a minute, and they're all over her. When she takes a shower, the girls are pounding on her bathroom door, wanting in.

Olivia, especially, has always been a mommy's girl, but her level of dependence on the Mrs. has become nauseating. When the Mrs. sits down, Olivia is instantly right next to her, with as much bodily contact as humanly possible, sucking her thumb and running her hands through the Mrs.'s hair, twisting it into knots. Olivia has also decided that she suddenly can't do things that she's been able to do by herself for quite some time--dressing herself, opening the refrigerator to retrieve a yogurt, etc.--without the Mrs. "helping" her (read: doing it for her).

In the evenings, the Mrs. and I rotate reading stories to the girls before bed every other night. However, for the past several weeks, the girls raise nine kinds of hell when it's my turn to read to them. They want Mommy to do it. And when we break the news to them that it's Daddy's turn to read, you'd think we were driving a red-hot nail through their eyeballs, the way they react. They don't want me reading to them, they don't want me putting them to bed, they barely want anything to do with me.

They certainly don't want me disciplining them. I'm the seemingly heartless enforcer in our house. I have the iron fist. They know that they can slide stuff past Mommy (or wear her out) that they can't get past me. (And the Mrs. knows this. I'm not writing anything that we haven't already repeatedly discussed with each other. She balances out my heavy hand, too.)

Every night, Olivia finds her way into our bed, and then she's all over the Mrs. like glue--again with as much bodily contact as humanly possible, even to the point where she lies on top of the Mrs. And when that doesn't satisfy her need for contact with her mommy, she starts rolling around all over her, like a dog rolls in grass. It's absolutely ridiculous.

June isn't helping matters any with her own behavior. She's the most stubborn, defiant kid in the history of mankind. Well, at least since her...um...mother...was a child. (Yeah, we'll stick with THAT parent being the one who is stubborn and defiant. It's my blog. I can write anything I want!) June will say "No!" in response to EVERYTHING. She often follows it up with a very theatrical slumping of the shoulders, pouty lip out all the way, sometimes letting a string of spit slowly go from her mouth to her shirt, head hung, and a slow walk to her room. When she finally gets to her room, she slams the door shut in grand fashion, often yelling "I QUIT!", and then completely comes unglued, crying and shrieking at the top of her lungs. And she never stops. She'll carry on for hours...days...months...if we let her. And it takes absolutely no effort whatsoever to set her off. She just did it to me this morning when I told her--in a very civil tone, not raising my voice one little bit--to stop coloring on the placemats with a pen.

Tell June it's time to eat dinner? "NO!" It's time for a bath? "NO!" It's time to get out of the bath? "NO!" It's time for a diaper change? "NO!" Want to sit on the potty? "NO!" Time for bed? "NO!" Time to get up? "NO!" Time to turn off the TV? "NO!"

You get the picture.

I think the Mrs. is just as exasperated as I am, but for a different reason. For me, as silly as it sounds, it hurts my feelings--A LOT--when my daughters say that they don't want me to do anything with them, and when they act like it's absolute torture to do something with me, rather than with their mommy. I know they're just 4 and 3 years old, and they likely don't mean anything malicious towards me, but after weeks and weeks of hearing "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!" every time I want to read them a story or put them to bed, it starts to take a toll. I'm also exceedingly frustrated with Olivia's sudden "helplessness" without the assistance of her mommy. And now June is starting to copy her older sister's behavior, too. June's second favorite phrase, behind "NO!", is "I can't do it!" That phrase goes right through me.

The Mrs., on the other hand, is feeling smothered, and for good reason. She's doing basically all of the childcare on a daily basis because our two little knotheads are so insistent on doing everything with Mommy. The girls constantly have a list of demands--I want juice, I want yogurt, I want candy, I want this, I want that--and they talk over each other, getting louder and more frantic in their demands as they try to drown the other one out. The Mrs. can't get a moment's peace. She gets very little sleep at night, and to make things worse, I'm a pretty heavy sleeper, while the Mrs. is a pretty light sleeper. There are times when I wake up in the morning feeling fairly refreshed, and the Mrs. looks like death warmed over because she's been up all night with one or both of the girls for some reason. I had no idea that she was up with them, or I would have helped. I know she wants to kill me, but I swear I didn't hear anything last night!

The dog is just as bad as the kids, wanting the Mrs.'s attention non-stop. You should witness the scene when the Mrs. gets home from work, having picked the kids up from school, and the dog greets her. It is absolute, unmitigated chaos for a good 30 minutes while two toddlers and a dog do everything they can to get the attention of the Mrs. and demand everything under the sun. I don't know how the Mrs. does it every day. I'd want to jump off the nearest cliff. That's probably the only thing saving me from being a widower--a total lack of cliffs in central Indiana.

I'm hoping this is just a phase. I'm hoping other parents can tell me that Olivia and June will eventually grow out of this. If I know there's an end in sight, I can hang on until we get through it. I can endure just about anything. I'm pretty stubborn and defiant that way. Er...I mean...the Mrs. is. But if this is something unusual, we need to get everyone in to see the doctor or a counselor or someone pronto because I can't take another 15 years of this.