My friend Creal keeps telling me, when talking about my daughter’s behavior, that this too shall pass.  Of course, she’s right.  Her son was probably a terrible toddler at some point, and is now almost a teenager, getting ready for middle school.  One day, that will be my Samantha.

Today, however, Samantha is still a terrible toddler.  In fact, yesterday she was a terrible toddler too.  Marcus came home from work early, and we planned to walk to a few shops and pick up sausage rolls for dinner (yummy!).  Samantha pitched a fit because Erica was sitting in “her seat” in the wagon.  And I mean, the child was absolutely hysterical, throwing things, hitting, and screaming at the top of her lungs.  Our neighbors, the parents of two slightly older children, were outside talking to us and commiserating.  Like Creal, they’ve been there, and reassured us that this stage won’t last forever, and that we’ve all been there.

Of course, one minute she’s hysterically crying, and the next she’s getting ready for bed and asking to say the Our Father.  We joke that if our oldest daughter wasn’t so adorable, and didn’t come back from these tantrums and turn into a little sweetheart, that we’d leave her outside indefinitely.

Thankfully, her tantrums do end.  She crawls into our bed at night, sometimes early in the morning, and asks if she can sleep with  us.  She tells us that she’s cold, and with her blankie in one arm, she curls up beside me and falls back asleep.  I love her smell.  I love how warm she feels curled up against me.  I love how vulnerable and sweet she seems at 3 o’clock in the morning.

Will this, too, pass?  I hope not.

Samantha, running from the waves over the summer