I said, "No, no, no!"
With each "no" her arm moved in deeper until she was up to her elbow in toilet water.
I washed her hands, picked her up under the armpits and put her in the hallway outside the bathroom.
"That is not okay! It is yucky! I feel very angry when you do that!" (Note that I was able to use "I" statements, even in the heat of anger)
I sat down on the stairs in a huff. She came up behind me and leaned against my back, twining her arms around my neck.
"I do not want to play. I feel very, very angry. I think you should say 'sorry.'"
She put her head against my shoulder contritely, twisted my head to the side with her hands and kissed me on the mouth.
Later, we went to the park. There were kids her age on the swings, but she was drawn to the basketball courts, where boys in fourth and fifth grade were playing ball.
She has been succumbing to the lure of older men a lot lately. Last week a bunch of elementary-school boys were running around the park with sticks they'd found. She really wanted to play with them. She wanted a stick, too. She looked up, way up, at them hopefully, but they didn't even see her.
Today she took a basketball from a boy with braided hair.
"It's okay. She can play with it," he said. She ran up and down the court with it, chucking it up towards the baskets. She figured if she sat down on the concrete, it would make her aim steadier. Unfortunately, it also placed her further from the baskets.
She wandered over to where some other boys were sitting by their bikes. They looked at her uneasily. This baby was all up in their space. I whisked her away to the swings.
I think she likes the older boys because they can climb up the slides backwards, without any help. They climb on top of the tube slides and monkey bars. And, of course, they bounce basketballs and rides bikes and run fast. Of course, girls can do these things too, but none of the girls who do these things seem to come to our park. Maybe Clara will be the first.
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