A tough week

      Ah, what a week it's been.  I have seen more tantrums this week than I saw in all my years subbing junior high Spanish.  And, I confess, towards the end of the week, my parenting skills suffered.
     Clara, who I believe may be getting a molar and a couple incisors or SOMETHING, didn't eat hardly a thing for two or three days.  She was already grumpy from the pain, and not eating compounded it.
     I bought her chocolate ice cream, which in peacetime she loves.  She refused it, shot-putting the spoon out of my hand and shrieking like an incoming mortar shell.  I thought if I could just get her to taste it, she would realize how delicious it was.  I filled one of her oral acetaminophen syringes with some I'd melted in the microwave, and shot it into the back of her cheek.
     "Nooooo!!!!" she gurgled, melted ice cream running out the sides of her mouth. Death by ice cream.  The horror.
     Every morning this week she woke at 5 a.m., burrowing her head into my neck and requesting banana with peanut butter and V8 juice.  I'd feed her whatever she would eat and get her back to sleep, but not for long.
     Yesterday I couldn't take it anymore.  Her afternoon nap was cut short by tooth pain.  I gave her ibuprofen. She wanted to watch Winnie the Pooh.  Again.  
     "No," I said, putting her into her car seat.  I was deep in the hundred-acre wood of exhaustion.
     The denial of another hour with Tigger and Piglet was too much for her to bear. I turned up Toddler Tales Nursery Rhymes to distract her, but, understanding my strategy, she screamed right through each of the songs, letting her voice reach the higher decibels in the quiet spaces between tracks.
     She wanted snacks, but only so she could throw them back at me or onto the floor of the backseat.  She wanted me to turn around and talk to her at a stoplight, but only so she could shout baby obscenities back at me.
     We got to the Y, and I committed one of my more egregious parenting errors.
     "Hey," I said, unstrapping her from the car seat.  Yelling like a banshee, she bicycled her legs and flung her arms over her head so I couldn't get a grip on her armpits.  "Hey! Look!  Look at all these people around who can see you crying!!"
     Inside the Y, I handed her over (wriggling and whining) to the lady in charge of Childwatch, gave her a kiss and left for two blissful hours in the yoga studio.
     When I came back to collect her, she had been finger painting and playing with a baby doll in one of the automatic swing sets.  She smiled at me hugely and came running.
     "Mommy!"