Yesterday was very strange. Was there a full moon?  First, the little angel got bitten at the Emerald City. There is a perfect half-moon of small red marks approximately the size and shape of her own mouth on her wrist. The accident report said the had a "confrontation with a friend."  This is apparently the politically correct way to say "some little heathen viciously chomped your child."  Really, though, I wasn't too upset because said heathen did not break the skin. If there had been a tetanus shot involved, I would've made them cough up names.  Apparently they are into protecting the identities of the biters at the Emerald City.

After I picked her up, I thought a nice jog might make us both feel better. It was only 80 degrees yesterday!  I almost had to put snowsuits on both of us.  As I strapped her in the jogging stroller, she started moving around, and I accidentally pinched some of her leg in the strap.  The addition of injury to insult to injury was too much. After sobbing for five minutes or so, she passed out in the stroller for the remainder of the ride.  When I woke her up to take her out, she decided NO MORE!  EVERYONE MUST SUFFER!  And, with that...she proceeded to have her first-ever full-drawn, blow-out, everything-must-go temper tantrum.  She howled for 35 minutes. 

I wasn't sure what was going on.  The normally mild-mannered little angel does not usually do this sort of thing.  I took her upstairs to tantrum in her room, on the carpet and far away from other sharp and hurty things.  I set her down on the floor and sat in the rocking chair to watch.  She thrashed for a few seconds, then came over and put her head on my lap and beat me with her tiny, chubby fists.  At that point, I realized she was past the point of control and terrified by her own inability to stop crying. It reminded me of when she was a tiny baby and would be afraid of the sight of her own flailing appendages, not realizing she could stop moving them anytime she wanted.

As she buried her head in my hair and screamed so loudly in my ear I thought I might go deaf, I thought of my own adolescence, which was a bit rocky and emotional.  How I used to howl this way when I realized I could do nothing about that day's predicament.  How hard it is to realize that life isn't fair.  How painful the wake-up call can be, even when you're sixteen months old. 

I had just picked up the phone to call my mother, thinking surely she should've stopped by now and checking (as always) to see if I had done something so odd as a small child, when the storm passed and the palm trees righted themselves.  She snuffled a few times, then smiled.  A rainbow broke out over the living room floor.  A bluebird chirruped from atop the floor lamp.

And all was well again.