McDonalds to the Rescue

John is so very three these days. 

I stand by the fact that three is so much harder than two.  Two is cute and still sort of baby, and three is lots of tantrums and disobedience and absolutely no reasoning.  For example, John stood in front of the fridge this past Friday morning and threw himself into a frenzy, demanding milk, while I calmly explained that we didn't have milk.  He was going to die on that hill.  There was no milk in the house.  It wasn't in the fridge.  It was not here.  But, he threw all his strength into keeping that fridge door open, crying and screaming, face red, demanding that he wanted milk. 

And usually in these tantrum situations, I awkwardly navigate my very pregnant self into picking up his flailing body and putting him in his bed, where he is required to stay until he can calm down.  By the time I leave his room, I am usually out of breath.  It is wearing me out. 

On top of the fun of being three (and I say that tongue in cheek; because obviously I love three year old John, but it comes with challenges, indeed), John is also in the process of dropping his nap.  Which means that he can't really fall asleep any more at nap time, but he also still needs the nap, so his "threeness" escalates every afternoon.  And I confess, about 2:00 I turn on a cartoon for him, and Ada and I cross our fingers that he falls asleep on the couch.  We have both said out loud that we miss John's nap time. 

So, today was one of those days.  It started at 6:30 am when John asked for candy, and I said no.  I have never let him have candy at 6:30 in the morning, but today John decided this was a battle he wanted to fight, and the day continued in that fashion.  So, by 1:00 pm when I was trying to clean the bathroom, and I could hear Ada and John fighting, and I was so exhausted, and they had watched too many cartoons, and I could go on and on.  I scrubbed and prayed, and my prayer mostly consisted of, "Lord, help me."  And that was about it.  That phrase over and over.  And McDonald's playground popped into my head.  I immediately took that as an answer to my prayer.  We all desperately needed to get out of the house, but it was really too hot for anything outside other than the pool, so the McDonald's playground seemed like such a good answer.  Plus, I had things I needed to work on, and I could easily do that there.  win-win-win. 

A lot of my parenting consists of that prayer these days, just, "Lord, help me."  And He will.  Even if the help looks like french fries and ice cream and an indoor playground.