Navigating in threes

Upon reminiscing, last year was a hard year. Black Saturday kicked it off. Then we proceeded on to issues closer to home. The threes. In a stroke of parenting "genius", Hubs and I decided to toilet train, put the kids in the same room, and teach Leif to dress himself all at once. Never were there born "wiser" people than us. Kids sleeping in the same room lasted only one month, but began a series of months where no one slept more than a few hours. Three months into toilet training, after many more episodes and screaming and bribing and yelling and fit throwing (by both parties, I am ashamed to admit) I reluctantly threw in the towel. Evidently, when baby #2 starts to crawl that can be a very traumatic time for baby #1. Well, guess who started crawling around our toilet training time. Yikes! So we kissed goodbye to this milestone. So exhausted beyond words, due to #2s lack of sleep, and #1s lack of cooperation, I had my first moments of crying to go back to work. After a while, we started sleeping again, and not worrying about doing anything in the toilet, things settled. Although Leif's behaviour became more and more...um...volatile. I put it up to the recent chain of events, and consistently made excuses for him. "He's tired", "he's got a sore bottom", etc. That was a year ago now. He has been getting more and more "tired". I realized the other day that, all this time, I have been dealing with a little boy who is learning his way through this world. Learning that he can say "NO!" and have power to ignore, or claw, or scream, or tantrum his way to achieve his will. He's learning he has a will. I guess I'm learning it too. Not a lesson I'm a fan of. This has been a very rough year in toddler land. I only hope that the 4s aren't worse.