Oh FG, poor you. Remember before kids when you thought that the point of parenting was to keep your kids happy? Now I realise that the point is to keep them alive........
My dt1 loves to argue. He'll say the wierdest things just to get ds1 to fight with him, and he will say 'no' when you ask him if he wants something, just so he can throw a tantrum when he doesn't get it. What the....? I definately take the hard line with him though, down to the other day in the car when I asked if he wanted juice and he screamed 'NO!' so I didn't give him any, then he spent the next five minutes screaming 'I WANT JUICE!' before eventually falling asleep (which explained his grottiness). I felt awful, but on the plus side, it is working. This time last year we had uncontrollable tantrums over literally nothing that would last over an hour, maybe three times a day. Now we have a couple of five minute tantrums every week instead. Ahhh... He is only nearly 4 though, which is younger than your dd, so probably not the same sort of stuff. I am a bit hard-ass and do the whole 'I'm sorry, I have to take your first answer' because that's the way we were brought up and I can't stand people being manipulative.
Speaking of which....... Broke down with dh couple of nights ago. I can't cope with anything when I am tired, and I was feeling so exhausted over this whole commuting my children for two hours a day thing while we wait to move, and he told me that the woodwork I'd spent all morning stripping would only have needed a light sanding. Feeling peeved that the little energy I had was spent on a wasted job, I asked him if he'd managed to get Friday off work to finish installing the kitchen and he said 'no, we've got too much work on at the moment'. At this point, I burst into tears and told him I couldn't do it anymore - I thought we only had a couple of weeks to go until moving, which is why I'd decided to pursue starting the kids at their new school, and now it looked like we were never going to get in the house, and even when we do get in the house, there's still so much to do, and I haven't got the energy and I CAN'T do it, and I'm in constant pain in my pelvis and sometimes can barely walk, and with only five weeks of pregnancy left to go, I should have stopped doing everything apart from five-minute school runs, the laundry and a bit of cooking, and I want to be lying down for the rest of the day on pillows in my cookie-dough (colour we have chosen for the walls) living room, thinking of babies not sanding floors, and it's all too much!
I felt awful because he is working harder than any human being I know, far harder than I can, being at work all day, going to the new house most nights and weekends, and even helping me with the boys and bits of housework that I can't do, and I was making him feel guilty and like he wasn't doing enough to keep me happy!
Anyway, it turned out he can get a day off work this week so he has gone up today and we have agreed to aim for a week on Saturday to move in, but I have to accept it in whatever state it's in. So I am feeling a bit better (the good night's sleep that followed helped a lot) but have to face that I cannot give up at this stage and need to keep going as much as I can while there is still a lot to do. Phew.
So, as I was saying, I don't know where dt1 gets his irrational, tantrum-throwing manipulativeness from..............