babies bongorno: Growing up

It's been a month of self reflection around here, and there's still much to be done. 3 seems to be an age of change, or it is for our Nora anyway. And, in response I've found it to be a necessary time of change for me as a Mama. It's hard - and wonderful. I'm getting to know Nora as her own person and getting to know myself as mother to a person separate from myself. Not that she hasn't been her own person since the beginning, but we were so connected for so long that I had almost come to think of us as one. Now I'm seeing us as two and realizing that us as two can be both wonderfully fulfilling and fun and a little bit frustrating at times.

My biggest lessons of the past month or so have been: 1) let kids be kids...it's messy and time consuming and inconvenient, at times, but it's the way to go; 2) always apologize when I mess up; and 3) when I feel like lecturing, I should ask questions instead.

Nora, showing Maxy Cat some love. They have a lovely relationship blooming these days, which makes me happy.

Mostly, I'm learning that Nora is not one of those people who can hold in her disgust when being treated unfairly. That, and I'm really stubborn. I had gotten into a bad cycle of getting frustrated when her desires became inconvenient for me (which is a pretty regular occurence, really) and had started to use bribery and general bossiness to get my way. Basically, I was acting like a 3 year old but getting mad at her for acting like a 3 year old. Real mature, huh? So, I'm trying to choose my battles wisely and taking lots of deep breaths so I can let her be the 3 year old. So far so good.

Nora is a wonderful artist, but the Boy Monster drawing below is definitely one of her best masterpieces. It's a monster...who's a boy...whose name is Nora. A psychoanalyst would go wild with this one!