The joys of parenting

In June, when I was heavily pregnant with the Little Miss, I did a four-week positive parenting course at my local community centre. On the first night when all eight attendees introduced ourselves, we were asked to explain why we were there. I was the only parent who was there for 'future proofing', to learn skills that I may need to combat behaviours that might occur with the arrival of the new cherub, as well as behaviours that may arise alongside BabyG's normal development. I sat there, my hands clasped over my ginormous belly, smug and secretly delighted with my parenting. My cherub, then two-and-a-half, had thrown wobblies that couldn't really even be described as tantrums. I had been doing descriptive praise and incidental learning since before I went into labour with her. After each class, I would go home and go over what was discussed with The Man. As parents, we agreed, we rocked.

Six months later, I have spent the good part of the last two hours crying, listening to my cherub have yet another battle over bedtime. This topped up a perfect day- we fought basically all day, over nothing; the result of two very tired, very cranky people in each others' hair far too much. And one acted like an unreasonable, belligerent three year old. Which would have been relatively acceptable if it had have been BabyG...

Thank god tomorrow is a brand new day. I've self-medicated with a kahlua and milk (you can take the girl out of the 80s, but you can't take the 80s out of the girl!), reread my positive parenting book and am prepared to suck up to that cherub of mine like there's no tomorrow and be fun, happy mummy, her NORMAL non-psycho mummy. I'm also going to try to get some professional help/advice with the bedtime hassles. Part of me thinks it's normal developmental issues that consistency will ride out, but the other part of me is worried sick...

Why can't they always be angelic like this:

Or this: