what a day

E watched a movie on my laptop while I took a shower this morning, and when I came out I caught her with her elbows on the keyboard, thumb in mouth, entranced by the lines she was making with her other hand on the LCD screen - with a sharp piece from a home-made glass and metal wind chime! There are scratches now. Could have been gouges, I suppose, but still annoying to look at on my nice otherwise clean white Mac. I was absolutely furious, as we'd already had a big "talk" about not touching the very delicate screen after she left finger smears all over it. The wind chime was made with wire and colored glass, given to her at the art studio after she admired it. The glass pieces aren't sharp enough to cut your skin at a normal touch, but they're not something to be playing with anyway. I said "I thought you had more sense!" and told her she could never watch any more movies on my computer, ever. Then I went in my room to calm down. She took much longer to calm down, herself, but by the mid-afternoon she wasn't crying whenever she thought of it. She compared this incident to how sad she was that time we were going to go to the mountain house but we couldn't because she was sick.

We went to Meeting (church) after that, and things were fine, but she was exceptionally energetic today. I took a nap on the couch while she watched a video, and instead of spacing out she talked all through it and had trouble sitting still. David called to offer me a break, said, "What's E doing?" I said, "bouncing off the walls". Later tonight she was even worse, stumbling and pitching herself over things, knocking stuff over, careening through the rooms, chattering nonstop and LOUDLY. When she finally went to bed she crashed hard.

We have had a lot of power struggles lately, and they've scaled back a notch, as I see her processing things through her play. Today at lunchtime (between church and my nap) was an extreme example of the kinds of things she's wanted to play since these control issues came to a head. She was the mom and I was the daughter, and the beans I was eating for lunch were my "yucky pills" that I had to eat 20 of. She wanted me to cry and whine and kick my legs throughout while she lectured me about it. She told me what to say and I had to pretend to cry a lot. Mimicking my calm motherly tone, she said things like, "You want to be healthy, don't you?"and "I'm sorry, Daughter, but you have to have a lot of painful shots," and "I'm the mom and I have the rules"! The rules for me were that I had to eat 20 yucky things and have 20 shots a day. I protested, "But that's more than most children have," and she replied, "You're the sickest child ever." She gathered a collection of keys, spoons, toy golf clubs, pencils and pens, and was preparing to give me "painful shots" with all of them - in that calm tone of voice - but luckily got distracted before I had to endure the whole series.