Stubborn, much? Part 2

Ryan's been gone since Thursday and my mom (my only, completely fantastic, babysitter) is out of town, and mommy's starting to feel it. Lordy, I love these kids with every bit of my being but I'm finding my patience is dwindling! Kate is the main one wearing me out because she is SOOOO argumentative. I know I deserve this since I'm sure I did the same thing to my mom, but she has to disagree with everything I say, even if I know she really does agree. Her love of saying "I can do it myself!" is becoming less endearing by the hour. I totally appreciate her wanting to try everything by herself, but she is so stubborn about it that if I do something that she wanted to do herself, she'll UNDO what I've done and re-do it herself. This applies to anything and everything. If I move the soap closer to her so that she can wash her hands, she moves it back as far from her as possible and then moves it right back to where I set it. If I let Hickory in, she lets her back out, closes the door, locks it and then opens it right back up to let Hickory in. I find myself trying to do things so she doesn't see them, just so I can get them done! Aside from her fruit snack incident (mentioned a few posts back), her other best display of stubbornness seems to be coming at the swimming pool. She is taking swim lessons and is getting much more confident in the water. I've been taking her and Will quite a bit since she can wear a life jacket or a floaty thing, so I can hold Will and not worry about her drowning. She keeps wanting me to put pool toys far away from her, so that she can swim out to get them. I think this is great. The problem is that once she retrieves the object, she then has said object AND whatever she used to help get her out there (like a kick board). She mainly uses her legs, so when she has nothing to push off of she kind of just treads water and has trouble getting going again. This makes her incredibly mad, and I made the (apparently huge) mistake of offering her help to get going. The first (and only) time I did this and went over to help her, she started shrieking, "NO, DO NOT HELP ME!!!!! DO NOT TOUCH ME!!" I'm not kidding--she was screaming at the top of her lungs. People milling about the club probably thought some sort of abduction was taking place in the pool. I learned my lesson. Now, I don't try to help her and she completely exhausts herself going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth across the pool. I do like her tenacity, but I could do without the shrieking. Ryan and mom, please come home soon--mommy needs another target for Kate's berating!!