limit posts per page

Question

I am working with category.php. I have my posts returning how I want them, I am getting the child categories how I want them but now I am trying to add pagination and limit the amount of posts to 3. When I ran my test, the 4th post showed up on the page. I was expecting only 3 and the pagination at the bottom. I am not sure what is wrong. According to the codex, this should be working.

 $allcats = get_categories('child_of='.get_query_var('cat')); 
foreach ($allcats as $cat) :
$args = array(
 'category__in' => array($cat->term_id)
);

$customInCatQuery = new WP_Query($args); 

if ($customInCatQuery->have_posts()) : 
echo '<div class="menupageContent">';

        $terms = apply_filters( 'taxonomy-images-get-terms', '' );
        if ( ! empty( $terms ) ) {
        foreach( (array) $terms as $term ) {
                if($term->term_id == $cat->term_id) {
                  echo wp_get_attachment_image( $term->image_id, 'menu' );
                }
        }
        }

echo '<h3>'.$cat->name.'</h3>';
echo '<ul>';    
while ($customInCatQuery->have_posts()) : $customInCatQuery->the_post(); ?>

<li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>

 <?php
 endwhile; 
 echo '</ul></div><!--end menupageContent-->'; 

 ?>

 <?php else : 
 echo 'No post published in:'.$cat->name;                
 endif; 
 wp_reset_query();
 endforeach; 

 ?>
  <?php if ( $wp_query->max_num_pages > 1 ) : ?>
      <div class="nav-previous"><?php next_posts_link( __( '<span class="meta-nav">&larr;</span> Older posts', 'paradiso' ) ); ?></div>
      <div class="nav-next"><?php previous_posts_link( __( 'Newer posts <span class="meta-nav">&rarr;</span>', 'paradiso' ) ); ?></div>
    <?php endif; ?>

Answer 1

I changed the first line of my code to this and it worked to limit the posts

 $allcats = get_categories(array('child_of' => get_query_var('cat'), 'number' => 3,'order'=> 'asc')); 

Now on to the next problem...Pagination