So the Devil took over Peyton's body the other day...

I'm not just saying this because she's mine. Peyton really is a good kid. She listens, eats her veggies, and rarely throws fits of any kind.

But then Sunday, November 10 came around and someone kidnapped my sweet, loving, perfectly behaved kid for thirty minutes and replaced her with the devil child from hell.

Here's how it went down. Martin went for a run. I needed to take a shower. I told Peyton she could keep playing in her toy room while I showered, and if she needed anything to come into the bathroom to get me.

Within moments, I heard blood curdling screams making their way down the hallway, getting louder as she got closer. With shampoo stinging my eyes, I asked Peyton what was wrong. Thinking she had likely lost a limb, was bleeding profusely from somewhere, or some intruder was about to kill us both, I braced myself for her tearful explanation.

"I need you to rewind my show. I missed some of it," she uttered through sobs and tears.

Calmly, I told her please don't cry, I will come rewind the show as soon as I'm done in the shower. In my mind, this was a perfectly logical response. But instead of being patient and understanding like she usually is, Peyton threw her body on the ground and shouted repeatedly, "REWIND MY SHOW!!! REWIND MY SHOW!!!"

WTF?!?!

Still standing naked in the shower, I did what any good mother would do. I yelled at her to get her ass in time out. She didn't listen. I gave her five seconds. She ran into our closet and threw her body under Martin's work shirts in a fit of rage I have never before witnessed.

 

Good mothering tip 101: Take a picture of your kid in the middle of her fit because it is just too damn funny not to, and because you know in the back of your mind this is going to make a fucking hilarious blog post.

 

I got out, dried off, and let her cry for a few more minutes (Martin is still on his run, BTW). And then we talked. We made up, said we loved each other, and she apologized.

But then mean old Mommy had to take it one step further and enforce a punishment. I told her because she acted so poorly, she wasn't allowed to watch any more TV today.

Cue temper tantrum number two.

View from the monitor of Peyton unable to bear the thought of no TV for the day.

Finally, after crying hysterically in her room for about ten minutes, she sheepishly walked back to my room and, once again, apologized. She promised never to act that way again.

"No shit," I thought to myself. "If you do, I will put you on the street corner with a "free" sign around your neck."  

And although I was seriously traumatized by the chain of events and am still replaying how I acted (Did I overreact? Was I too harsh? Was I not harsh enough?), within minutes my happy go-lucky child returned. Just in time for Martin to come home from his run.

"So, what'd I miss while I was gone?"



I'm pretty sure she meant to have her middle fingers up in this one.