We had a bit of a rough evening Thursday. It started out well enough, I remembered to tell one of the daycare teachers that Reid will be absent Monday through Wednesday next week as I have that conference in Toronto to attend. When Reid came over, Archana asked her where she was going and Reid replied “Missle’s” and I had laughed and told Archana we were going out for supper. By the time Reid had identified Melissa as my friend and Stephen, Sarah and Benjamin as her friends, the time for talking up Toronto had passed. Another teacher came up and explained that she’d been playing with Reid, chasing her, and Reid fell down and scraped her knee. Reid always has one scrape or another and so I wasn’t overly worried and just asked if the new scrape qualified for a band-aid becaue Reid would think it was worth the pain. Reid happily showed off her bandaged knee to me and then Melissa’s kids when she had the chance. She never mentioned the accident or any pain.

Reid and I went to Melissa’s for supper as always. In our summer tradition, we managed a swim before supper. Reid played at the edge a bit, swam a bit and sat on the rocking bench for a while watching. All three activities pleased her. At supper, though, I restricted Reid’s parmesan cheese to one heaping teaspoonful on a very small serving of spagetti. Great amounts of woe and anguish followed. Tears were spilled. Sarah tries to help with reassurances and distractions. She will be a good babysitter and mama one day. Reid ended up crying on the couch for a while and finally, she came back to the table. She ate and then there was a bit of a crisis when she received only a half of a cupcake rather than the unbroken one she wanted. Last week, she was given a full cupcake and ate only four bites of it. More unhappiness and an offer from her mama, who was getting to the end of her own rope, to go home since Reid was so tired. The wails changed to “I not tired!” Wailing is usually proof that Reid is indeed tired, but I didn’t argue the point. We soon packed up and left, with Reid fussing in the back seat and me telling her how much better she would feel if she “had a rest” while we drove. She didn’t believe me. She did, however, go to sleep pretty much as soon as we got into the rocking chair at home. Poor tired girl.