Comes With Age. (I guess?)

Two and a half this month and although Lily has always been a particularly independent child, she has become even more so. Tantrums fill the air after Cybil style comments like this:
I want them
I don't want them
No I want THEM!!!
No I don't want them
Mama I waaaaaaannnnnnttt them
NO I don't want them.

OK. Whew. Cold pancakes now going in garbage after sitting untouched for an hour, igniting tantrum #1 for the day at 9:15am.

Exhausting. I think this is about being 2.5? Control of ones actions and the need to assert oneself? I will hope that this ends in six months if not sooner. But it ominously reeks of adolescence and I'm definitely not accepting that it's beginning now.

No thanks.

Oh. And does taking a little chair over to the front door and undoing two Medeco locks and letting oneself out into the hall fall under the same assert-my-independence category?

Not.... cool.

I also clearly recollect my mom laying out my outfits the night before school. Can still see the the plaid dress with white turtleneck there on the rocker, its outline bathed in moonlight. But Lily, not yet in school now picks out her own outfits most days. And I am not to help her.

Mama.
Go in da other room.

OK Pumpkin, just call me if you'd like some help.

OK. She says definitively, with distracted excitement, focused determination.
GO.

She's pretty good. Color matching a bit off, things sometimes inside out, but generally, maybe I should regard this as my teen toddler making mornings easier? Lies them out on the floor first, after multiple selections are reviewed and makes her selection.

Perhaps Alan is trying to assist from above. To lighten the load? Maybe that's why she briefly went for the heavy knit Yankee sweater this morning with the outside air already in the mid to high 70s... We were successful in diverting her attention and she then came out with a perfect, slightly large, woven hand-me-down shift dress (for a four year old, but we're looking ahead, right?)and she donned it skillfully with only distanced supervision from her Granny who subtly assisted with a mis-routed arm.

The dressing I can take, the front door exits and tantrums I can do without.
But maybe those are next on Alan's list.