Monkey

"I don't want to go" (said as she's climbing out of bed and heading into the bathroom). She has a monkey (Daddy brought home from a conference he had to go to) a bunny (Grandma gave her one year for her birthday) and a dog (given to her by her oldest brother and new sister in law) that she sleeps with. They're all fairly small, so they don't take up too much space in her bed. When she gets up, she almost always puts them on their backs on her pillow. Part of the OCD thing, I think. Then she goes and uses the restroom. While she's gone, I usually make her bed. This morning I couldn't find her monkey. I know she had it when she went to bed, but it seriously wasn't anywhere in her bed or on the floor. I finally gave up looking and just made her bed and laid out her clothes. When she came back in her room she had the monkey in her hand. Me: "Oh, there's your monkey!" Rachel: "Floor!"  She laughed. I think that's the first time she's laughed in the morning for a very very long time. I guess it got tangled in her pajamas somehow while she slept and then fell on the floor in the bathroom. It was great to have her so happy first thing in the morning. Generally speaking, she isn't a morning person. She stayed in a fairly happy frame of mind until I was putting her coat on.  "It's not yours. You're rude. You're not going. It's my birthday. It's not your birthday." She waited for her bus and got right up when it got here and didn't have any problems with getting on. She even waved to me (I suspect the bus driver told her to, but it was still awesome).

Yesterday when she came home from school she was in an okay mood. I asked her what she did in school and she said that someone bit her. I would be a lot more concerned about that if she didn't frequently accuse me and her brothers of doing things that we haven't done. I've worried at times that my neighbors must think we're awful, especially in the summer when the windows are open. She will be in her room screaming "Don't! That hurts! Stop it! Get out! Go Away! Don't do that!" when no one is even in there with her. Sometimes she'll yell things like that while I make her bed. She's said her brother bit her when he wasn't even here. So I always look for evidence of something wrong, but have never found any. It really makes me wonder where the accusations come from. I hope those aren't scenes that she's playing in her head. I really hope that she daydreams happy thoughts. When she was little and I asked her where she hurt, she would always look for a bandaid or scratch on her body. We would sometimes let her wear bandaids just because she liked them, so there frequently wasn't even a scratch underneath them. She used to get sick a lot, and I had to try and communicate with her to find out if her tummy or her head hurt. It never worked. One time when she had strep throat I didn't realize she was even sick until she had a seizure, because she didn't communicate to me in any way that she wasn't feeling well and she didn't develop a fever until later. She ate taco chips without complaint an hour before I took her to the doctor and he commented that her throat was so swollen he couldn't figure out how she was eating anything. When I touched her throat and asked her if it hurt, she looked all over her arms, found a freckle, and pointed to it as the place that hurt. She's a little better now. She will say that her head hurts when she's got a headache, but I don't think she really understands pain that doesn't have a scratch or something where you can point to it and say "that's the owie." So I wonder if sometimes when something hurts inside her and she can't point to where it hurts, she comes up with a scenario to explain the pain. Someone hurt her. Someone bit her. She needs to have something concrete to say "this is what caused me to hurt, and this is the spot that hurts." Anyway, that's my best guess. Life is so often a complete guessing game around here.

I couldn't interest her in books or coloring or anything during the afternoon or evening, but most of the time she had at least a slight smile on her face. Towards the evening her right hand was especially claw-like. Her left hand frequently is that way, and it twitches a lot. Her left leg frequently twitches, too, and all her muscles get tight. She has amazing muscles, by the way. Especially for someone who sits so much. She just hardly ever relaxes her muscles. Anyway, last night her right hand was contorted and the muscles in her arm were tight. That's unusual. She kept looking back behind her to her left, and then up at the ceiling. Every 5 to 10 minutes or so I would notice that she was almost tipped over to her right. Just saying her name would call her attention to it and she would sit back up, but then fairly soon she would be twisting and leaning again. I haven't decided if she does that more when she's tired or not. I know that if she's really engaged in doing something (coloring or looking at books or something), she doesn't twist or twitch very much, but the more she gets lost in her head, the worse they get. That is one reason why I like her to be engaged in activities and not just staring out the window. Although if she's really watching something outside (like kids playing) it works as well as a book.

She was happy to go to bed last night. She smiled at me and said "night" as I was turning out her light. I don't get to watch her sleep much because if I open the door at all it wakes her up, but seeing her lying there in her bed with her animals all tucked in with her and a smile on her face is one of the "pictures" I save in my mind (and heart). My beautiful angel.