shots

"What are you doing?" "I'm not going to go." "I'm a girl. It's not for girls." "I don't like this." "This is bad." Lots of words this morning. Not necessarily interactive, but it helps me to know what's going on in her head. She wasn't angry, as none of it was said at all passionately. She just wasn't in a happy mood. She had no trouble getting dressed or eating her breakfast (and her teeth are sparkling clean! Yea!). All in all, a relatively good morning.

Yesterday I picked her and her brothers up from school and we went and got flu shots. Yeah, that was fun. I didn't tell her ahead of time what was up because 1. I wasn't sure she would understand me even if I told her and 2. if she did understand it would just make her upset and make the whole project even more difficult. So she went first. She's had her blood drawn to test levels of medication more times than I care to think about, so she understands needles. This was less dramatic. I think seeing the bandaids on the table in front of her helped (they are her favorite accessory - much better than necklaces or earings) but also, they didn't have her sit down. She hates sitting down on the exam tables in doctors offices. Especially if they have the crinkly paper on them. She has enough experience to know it's probably not going to be fun. The chairs she sits on when they draw her blood are pretty intense, too. So Just pushing up her sleeve, a quick poke and she's done was a lot less traumatic. And then she had the barbie bandaid and a sucker, so she was pretty happy. I thought maybe it would make it easier that we were all getting shots, but it was so quick I don't think she noticed. Anyway, one possibly traumatic experience taken care of without any drama.

Once we got home, she was content to sit in her room and stare out her window. She didn't even notice when it was starting to get dark and I turned her light on. I wish we could go back to the days when she played with her toys and made messes. Maybe tomorrow. At the very least I wish I knew what she was thinking about all the time. What she daydreams about. I hope she's happy inside her head.

She ate her dinner without difficulty, had a bath, and went to bed early to make up for the last two nights of being up a bit late. The concern I have is that she doesn't get up out of bed until I get her up in the morning anymore, so I have no idea how much sleep she actually needs. She's a very light sleeper, so if I peek in at her it wakes her up even if she was asleep before. I don't know if she goes right to sleep or if she wakes up in the night. I have no idea how much sleep she's getting and if it's too much or not enough. She complains a lot about headaches, which can be caused by either of those. I seriously need a personalized instruction manual. The guessing game sometimes gets to me.