Life's Not Fair, Pumpkin.

Whoever taught Peyton to say "NO FAIR!" any time she doesn't get her way, I'm coming for you. I swear to God, I will knock you around until you scream for mercy. And then when you do, I'm going to yell in your face "LIFE IS NOT FAIR."

Unless it was another kid, and the I'm smacking your parents around.

Gah. I thought this mess would get better now that she's five. All the parenting gurus and books say that five year olds don't throw tantrums. We were supposed to have left those behind at four.

I BEG TO DIFFER.

The tantrums are killing me. And the blowing raspberries while we have our mouth full of sweet potatoes is killing me, too. That's Chuck, though, not Peyt.

See, this is why I don't, as a general rule, read parenting books. Because the people who write them don't know what the hell they're talking about. But, the class I'm helping teach that I took last session has a book that comes with it. And the book is a must-read for the class. And that book says that tantruming ends at five.

So why is my daughter screaming her fake cry right now because her Daddy told her that she can't go on PixieHollow.com tonight?

Might I add that it's 12:30 AM at the time I started writing this? That would be why she can't go on PixieHollow.com tonight. Because it is already tomorrow morning, and she NEEDS TO BE ASLEEP NOW.

The thing is, it never gets better. She'll trade tantruming for something I hate more. OR, we'll keep the tantrums and she'll pick up something ELSE that I hate more. That's what I really think will happen, and what I think happens every time we move through a phase--I think they keep all the horrible behaviors from the previous phases, and then they just add more and more terrible things until you realize that the phase you just passed through was not so bad at all.

Parenting is relentless. And the leading cause of blackout drinking.