Toddlers are FUN!

Since Dyl-ill-an (as Elizabeth calls him) moved in last Wednesday, we have seen some FUN changes in our lovely daughter:
1. Obsessive need to be the center of attention
2. Increase in bossiness (which was already peaking at intolerable levels)
3. Decrease in concern for own personal hygiene (aka, will sit in poopy diaper for hours and repeatedly decline requests to perform a diaper change)
4. Marked decrease in patience, demonstrated when one of us says the word "outside" and she jumps up with glee, runs to the front door and attempts to break out. Nevermind that she's shoeless, in pajamas and it's 5 am. Nevermind that it's 20 degrees outside, she's wearing just a diaper and it's a very dark 7:30 pm. She's heard the word, it sounds fun and she's doing it. Now. Dammit.

Another fun change, she's become a little tyrant. Elizapoleon. She'll sing a little tune "do dee do dum dum di dah di la di dah" and then point to you and in all seriousness tell you to "Do it!"
And you better God damn well do it and do it right, or she'll enter the second phase of toddler tyrant behavior which is irrational sadness. This phase is characterized, in my child, by the phrase "Why do that?" Elizabeth uses this phrase repetitively whenever things don't go her way. We put her in bed for a nap the other day and she screamed, howled, cried and shouted "WHY DO THAT? WHY DO THAT??!? WHY DO THAT?????!!!" until she finally passed out.
Fun.
It would have broken my heart, if it wasn't so annoying.

Another addition to the vocabulary is "Gim it" which means "give it"
We hate this.
It usually goes something like this. You have a book she wants.
She walks over to you, says "Book. Gim it." and extends her hand out, grabs the book and starts to wrestle it from you.
If she escapes a schwack right off the bat, she gets a "Little Talking To" which consists of Bob or I telling her "Gim it is not nice. Do not say gim it. Say please can I see that?" To which she replies, "ok, sorry" but then turns around and says "Cookie, gim it."
In one ear, out the other.


Other emerging traits of the toddler tyrant is that she is always right. As the overlord/puppet master/ruler of the house, she sets the rules (you CAN draw on the walls with charcoal, and you CAN eat ice cream for dinner!) and she can arbitrarily break them as well. Case in point...this morning, despite assurances from her grandma and myself that Dyl-ill-an did NOT want his car seat (in which he was napping) to be violently rocked, she found it to be perfectly acceptable.
This abrupt change in the rules was indicated by her loud protest of "NOOOOO!" when we tried to remove her hands from the car seat.
Shortly thereafter, Elizabeth removed the prohibition previously in place on kicking the cats in the belly while laughing maniacally.
In response, I nearly removed life from her person, but calmed down enough to merely give her a "Little Talking To" which went sort of along these lines:

Me: You cannot kick the cat. He does not like that. It is NOT NICE! (the worst thing you can be in THIS house is deemed NOT NICE)
Elizabeth: OK.
Me: If you kick him again, he's going to go apeshit and scratch you and I'm going to let him, OK?
Elizabeth: OK.

It was a small battle won for the side of decency.