Being three

It's hard being three. I have to remember this.

You're not at all a baby any more, there's no way you can hide under that comforting banner any longer; but you're the very littlest of the little kids. You can talk the hind leg off a donkey, but you keep forgetting that I can't read your mind when you wanted your juice in the other cup. People keep expecting you to be the bigger person, just because you have a little sister, but that's not always fair.

You're pushing, pushing, looking for your boundaries, finding how far you can press us; the last thing you can possibly do is whatever we want you to, which is particularly hard when it's something you physically need to do, like eat, or poop, or sleep. Then your mind and your body are stuck in a battle royal and sometimes you just break down altogether because that's too much to take. Sometimes you have to tell us not to look as you do what we asked, because if we see, you'll probably disappear in a puff of logic. This is a good solution: we like to comply.

You're so busy thinking, all the time. Your grip on the difference between fact and fiction is tenuous - in your mind, everything is possible, you have every superpower ever imagined, and then some. Spider-Man is as real to you as I am, and you honestly don't understand why if you dress like him, you don't become him. Even when you get your long-desired real official Spider-Man costume (sshhh! It'll be a birthday present), I suspect you'll still be making machines out of all the red and blue things in the house that will turn you into real Spider-Man.

You want to know why. You want to know how and when and where, but mostly why. You want to know everything we're talking about, even when we're not talking to you. When you get tired, your need for why goes on autopilot and you just keep asking.
And soon, you'll be four.