Sleepy Sister and Terrible Tantrums

Sometimes having a three year old is the greatest thing ever. She converses with me for long periods of time. She is a ham, and loves to make people laugh. We enjoy spending time with each other. She can sit on the floor, talking to her toys, and play for hours. But sometimes, this happens:
And how do you deal with this sort of thing in public? Me, I laugh and take pictures of her screaming. I sit down and get comfortable to wait it out. Because I know that this usually happens because she is either tired or hungry. I also know that if I just wait a few minutes, she will come over and climb in my lap because she is just really tired. (Not sure if you can tell, but the lady walking behind her was laughing at her. I totally would have been, too. In these pictures she is screaming "I don't want you a take my picture!") This time it was a little of both. And she was fine once she calmed down and I carried her.

I have always felt that age three is worse than two. The "terrible twos" are such a myth. It should be the terrible threes. For Gwennie this was like a switch flipped on, she turned three and her tantrums became hilarious. I think mentally I have to find them funny or I might lose my mind. It is hard to do this alone, but I have to. I have to find ways to deal with these things. I have to take short cuts. And I always worry that these emotions are exasperbated by our situation.

Rhayn had her first sleep over last night. We went over to her friend's house, and we had dinner followed by roasting marshmallows on an open fire. Rhayn had an awesome time, she was excited about it. She went to bed late at 9:30ish. And was up at the crack of dawn. I even heard that they slept outside.

After her long night, we went to the zoo today. (Where Gwennie threw the tantrum.) We followed the zoo with a few hours of play at McDonald's. (Which stopped giving Military Discounts, even though it was Veteren's Day. Harumpf, grumble, grrrr.)

We came home for a little while and Rhayn fell asleep on the floor, just sort of passed out. If you know her at all, you know this is so unlike her. She doesn't fall sleep easily. At about 3 I took the girls to Petco to buy a dog food container, because Alice is a pain in my butt and tore up the dog food bag. We had a container, but not all of the 40 pound Costco bag fit in it. I had to store the remainder on top of that in the original dog food bag. And Alice? Well she likes Lily's food and decided to help herself to it this weekend while we were gone. (Did I mention that Alice is getting f-a-t?) But also, the container we had for cat food broke this week (it was a cleaned out litter tub), and I was going to buy a container for that. It worked as a trickle down to just buy a bigger one for dog food and use the smaller one for the smaller 25 pound bag of cat food.

When we finally were home, Rhayn fell asleep on the couch (at about 4 pm.) She had been walking in a daze all through Petco, and saying she felt a little sick. She actually didn't wake up, even when I was grating eight pounds of cheddar for the cook-a-thon we are attending this Friday. I think at one point she sort of woke up, and I told her to go to bed. She zombie-walked to her room, put on pajamas and turned on her radio. But when I went to talk to her, she was already asleep again.

I really hope it was just a long day, and that she isn't sick. I know I can deal with it if she is sick I just hope she isn't.

And now I am going to bed, because I have class in the morning. Ah, it was a great four day weekend.