Wednesday, March 14, 2007

My worst little nightmare

What a day I had with Adriana yesterday.

She normally cannot be relied upon to remember much of anything, and I do try to keep in mind that she is only 5 and a half, but man, sometimes she tries the patience of a saint. For some reason , she woke up early (6:15 am) and proceeded to wake everyone else up by her trying to get the stairgate open, knocking it backwards and forwards. A little while later, she threw a hissy fit because I needed to log on to check the weather report online and I kicked her off the computer.
Finally got her to school and went about my business until I tried to get on the computer myself only to find the mouse had disappeared. (Been hidden, more like it...) I didn't want to accuse her of something she hadn't done; but it did look fishy...
When I went to collect her from school, she came out wearing someone else's sweatshirt (fairly obvious since it hit her knees) and had lost some money I had given her to buy a red nose with (in support of Comedy Relief). I would have been ok with all this and taken my usual "if I weren't laughing, I'd be crying" approach, but Adriana decided to blow all of us off and run to the playground to play. This sort of made me lose it, and we spent the next 10 minutes searching for her sweatshirt and money by me dragging her around behind me. Then I got more cross with her when she admitted to hiding the mouse on me in the morning because she was mad at me.
Things went from bad to worse later when I tried to take her to her ice-skating lesson. For some reason, she decided she hates ice-skating, she hates me and wants to go home. I was trying to wrack my brains for a reason that sounded reasonable to her coach, as to why she refused to move on the ice and just stood there, but I had nothing.
Was she trying to assert her will after I had run roughshod over hers at school?

Was she upset that I hadn't given her anything to eat before going on the ice?

She did say she was too cold to skate in her spring jacket...was she coming down with something?

About halfway home, I was trying to hash this out with her:

"Adriana, why don't you like skating anymore?...Adriana?...hello?"

I looked in my rear view mirror; she'd fallen fast asleep! Poor thing was exhausted and I just didn't recognize the signs.

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