A rough day

After dinner, Maia came up to the bedroom, looking for me. She knew I had been angry with her.

We had taken her to the Kaiser urgent care clinic after Kristina picked me up from work. She has had a rash, and it had gotten worse. It looked like it was spreading over her arms and cheeks.

She was difficult at the clinic. She will get into this mood where she makes noise and acts out just to be acting out. Kristina had been cross with her and so had I. Dinner was tense. It took forever to get her to sit down.

"Come," I said to her, patting the bed. I was lying on it with my laptop in my lap. I wasn't mad at her anymore.

She climbed on. She had two little tins--plastic containers, really--of something sweet and sour.

"I can't," she said, trying to open it.

I opened it for her. She was pointing at something, and I realized it was the remote for the television.

She turned it on.

She held out a candy to me, and I opened my mouth, and she popped it in.

"Thank you, Sweetie."

Something about the way she was sitting made her tilt over, and I laughed. She continued on to the floor.

I expected her to come back up, but she didn't. "What's wrong, Sweetie?" I asked her.

"You laughed at me," she said.

"I wasn't laughing at you, Sweetie," I said joining her on the floor. "It was funny," I said. "You laugh at Daddy when he does something funny."

"Did somebody laugh at you at school today? Was that what happened??

But she wouldn't answer.

"It's school," I said later to Kristina. Maia was asleep.

"Well, I don't know what to do about it," she said.

"Neither do I," I said.

John, Tuesday, September 4, 2007