Sassy 4 year-old available to borrow

Think I might get in trouble if I put an ad like that on Craigslist? Maybe.

I love Kate Michelle, I do. She is darling and precocious and funny and smart. But I'm done with her for a while. If her father wasn't coming home tomorrow (praise the heavens!) I would have to ship her off to one of her aunts for a few days just to regain my sanity. Lately she is Miss Whiny Pants with an extra side of "No." Whew! When I tell her to go potty, she tells me "You don't know how the inside of my body is feeling." True, true. But I do know you've peed in your pants 3 times in the past week.

Kate is super helpful and loves to be doing whatever I am doing. She and I often cook dinner together and she does a great job. It's just that I am googleplex times less efficient when she is with me every second of the day. She does not play well by herself, so my only respite when I want to do things like clean toilets or other such exciting and potentially hazardous jobs is to have her watch TV. Only she doesn't watch TV anymore, she just watches shows on the iPad until I pry it away from her sticky little hands.

I realized I wasn't imagining how unable she is to entertain herself (or unwilling?) until this week, when Kara was home sick with the stomach flu. Kara was a model patient, getting to the bathroom to throw up on time all by herself and patiently resting in bed, never asking for anything but gratefully accepting anything I offered her. When Kara woke me up at 4:00am to tell me she threw up, she apologized for waking me and wanted to just put herself back to bed. I had her stay home an extra day just to make sure she was all better and she played upstairs contentedly all by herself for several hours, occasionally asking me to come see her latest creation. I got more house-cleaning and projects done with a sick kid at home than I usually do with Kate home. (By the way, Kate was insistent on watching Kara throw up, asking her about her throw up, asking her if she needed to throw up again, and on and on. Luckily she finally went to afternoon preschool that day so Kara and I could both get some rest.)

This is not a "Kate is bad, Kara is good" post. It's just that Miss Kate is going through a phase and it's taking too long to get out of. I'm desperately trying not to spoil her even though she's the youngest and maybe even the cutest. I don't give her what she wants all the time, but she is very insistent on having what she wants and sometimes I just can't take it anymore.

But tonight I can take it, because she's in bed. I made up a very humorous (just ask me) song about how Mommy's favorite time of the day is bedtime. It involved some hip shaking. I may be losing my mind.

And tomorrow night (and for the next 7 nights after that), her father can put her to bed.