Finley's First Teenage Temper Tantrum

When Finley gets tired, you can always tell because she gets destructive. She must have been very tired after her night of tossing and turning (she woke up crying at 11pm last night and was so restless that I ended up sleeping in her bed while she took my spot in the big one!) because today, when we got home from school, she started by throwing her Cheerios on the floor as she looked at me with an "evil" (we all know she can't really look evil!) look in her eyes. Then, when Cam came home, she started moving her little table all over the living room. Then, she started throwing everything she could find that was on a higher surface on the floor. Then, instead of walking to the other side of her table to get the beads she wanted to throw, she crawled on top of the table to get them. I told her absolutely no and told her she had to clean up her mess. Similar to a story I've been told about myself and a coat in the entryway (I hear you laughing through the computer Mom and Dad!), I had to physically take Finley's hands and pick up the mess she made. She just kept on, so I put her in a time-out on the couch. Repeatedly, she got off the couch, so I put her in her bedroom and shut the door. She (fake) cried for awhile and then came out into the hallway, fake crying just enough so we would hear her come out of her room. I walked into the hallway and said, "Finley, you get back in your room," and she turned around, cried a little louder, and slammed the door behind her. It was pretty precocious - I guess we had a foretaste of the feast to come!