Dear Mom of the Threenager,

No one prepared me for the threenager year. I knew plenty about the terrible twos, and terrible though they were, I had had the naive idea that when my angel turned three she would magically turn, well, not so terrible anymore.

I wasn't prepared for the boundary pushing. I wasn't prepared for the emotional meltdowns, and I wasn't prepared for the grand gestures of independence.

When my oldest was three, it was one of the greatest parenting adventures I have had thus far in my decade of parenting. She was (and still is) one of the funniest human beings I had ever met and I laughed more than I ever though I would or could as a mom. She's fantastically hilarious.

But yall, it was also SO VERY HARD.  

Every day she had a new idea of what she thought she should be able to do that day. One day it was "decorating" my headboard and footboard of my bed by sticking my jewelry to it with vaseline.

 Another day, she cried for HOURS because we couldn't go swim with the dolphins that day. She insisted on dressing herself in outfits that didn't come close to matching, every day.

Every time I brushed her hair, she acted as though I was cutting her scalp open with a scalpel.

 At naptime in her preschool, she would wait until the teacher got all of her friends to sleep and then she would POP up and with great delight say, "WAKE UP FRIENDS! WAKE UP!!! IT'S TIME TO WAKE UP AND PLAY!"

During that season, I had a lot of mom friends who would laugh with me, a lot who would give me advice (most of it was awesome and some of it extremely helpful!). I had some solidarity from moms in the trenches with me.

But I think the one thing I didn't hear, and the one thing I really needed to hear was that it was OKAY that it was so hard. That every day of mothering that little world changer was so hard and that it was supposed to be.

So Mama of the threenager, hear this:

 It's so very hard. And it's ok. And it's going to be ok, yes. But it's ok that its hard right now.

It's supposed to be hard. This is very hard work you are doing every day.

Know that you are not alone, there are other threenager moms in the trenches with you and it is hard for every one of us. Hang in there and know that one day they will turn four, and thankfully there is no freaky four. (But they do whine a lot.... don't say no one told you...)