I've been through the terrible twos. Twice. And I have to admit that they have nothing on the torrentious threes. My daughter is driving me nuts!

She's always been one of those sweet, easy-to-parent children. She took long naps. She stayed in her bed. She ate whatever was on her plate. She kept her room clean. She listened when I asked her to do something—and more often than not, she did it.

But not anymore. She's turned into a walking, talking ball of sass. For example, last night, we made pizza for dinner. And by made, we didn't pick up a take-n-bake but we made the crust, then I let each of my kids pick from an array of toppings and make their own personal pizza exactly the way they wanted it. Lots of good mommy points for me, right? Wrong.

My daughter carefully picked her toppings—arranging Canadian bacon and cheese and pineapple and mushrooms in just the right places and tasting the toppings "to make sure they were good" before putting them on her pizza. She proudly presented me with her masterpieces, only to deem it "too yucky" as soon as it came out of the oven.

This was our lovely dinnertime conversation:

Kate: "This is yucky, I want Macaroni for dinner"

Cameron (my husband): "No, you're getting pizza and if you're not going to be polite, then don't talk at all."

Kate: "You don't talk at all. I don't like you! I don't think you're handsome anymore!"

And, it went downhill from there.

Just reading that makes me cringe. Where did she get that sass? I swear, we do not let her get by with it—yet it still slips out of her mouth like every other day. Wait… make that every other minute. Rescue me… my daughter doesn't turn four for six more months and I'm not sure I can handle six more minutes of this! Ideas?