Eliza and The Destruction of Government Property

Eliza has transitioned to quiet time very well.  She still naps when she feels like it, but otherwise stays in her bed and peruses the 25 or so books she insists on keeping in there.  (I'm not exaggerating.)  But about 2 or 3 weeks ago, she didn't want to just stay in her bed looking at books, so she climbed out of the crib, found a pair of scissors Cat had stashed somewhere, and got into Cat's piggy bank.  She then destroyed a $1 bill and a $5 bill.

When Cat saw what Eliza had done to her money, she retaliated by cutting up Eliza's favorite blanket, then she broke the scissors.  But she was later remorseful and asked me to teach her how to sew the holes closed.

I decided that they were both to blame: Eliza for using scissors without supervision AND for climbing out of her bed during quiet time, Cat for having scissors in the bedroom AND not keeping her money in the safe place - the top dresser drawer - which she's been told to do many times.  So I gave Cat $3 out of Eliza's money from grandparents for her birthday and Valentine's Day.

Unfortunately, though, the cutting didn't end there.  During Eliza's fateful quiet time that day, she also cut the title page of one of our favorite picture books in half.  And Cat found this lovely bunch of blonde hair in Eliza's crib that afternoon:

Most of the hair she cut off came from the section by her left ear.  Below, you can see where I tried to get a good picture of it, but it was tough.  She was really upset with me while I was trying to take this picture.  I don't know if it was because she was embarrassed by what she'd done and felt bad about it or just because I was forcing her to take a picture when she didn't want to.

I didn't think the cut hair was bad enough to require a new haircut (though she needed one anyway, I admit) but after several days I could see it wasn't blending in and we needed to do what we could to make it look better.  So, we sought professional help.  And this time, Eliza was all smiles.

Eliza has been more of a troublemaker the last few months than she was in the past.  Her recent escapades include dumping a bag of cereal onto the counter, coloring in books, squeezing toothpaste into a bathroom drawer, stabbing cherry tomatoes with a fork, scattering dirt in the kitchen when we were planting wheatgrass, drawing on her skin and socks with a marker, and more that I think I've blocked from my memory.  

She has also started departing from the truth quite a bit.  When she's done something she shouldn't do, she almost always blames Jack.  One day Ben saw where she had cut slits in the the pages of another picture book and asked her about it.  She blamed Jack, and when Ben said that Jack hadn't done it, she went into an elaborate story about how Allie (a girl down the street who is in nursery with Eliza) had come in and cut the pages while Eliza was sleeping.  Eliza also likes to take things that Cat tells us about from school and tell her own rendition, as it happened to her.

Is this the Terrible Threes?