Weekly Update

When I'm under a pile of work, or feeling sick, or nursing a sick family, or just plain lazy (all too often), this weblog suffers. Considering that the last substantive post was two weeks ago, one might wonder what's up. Well, all of the above, really. So here's a quick recap of recent events.

Jean came down with a 48-hour influenza, and I had to take care of her and watch over Kelly when not working. The iMac is working out fine, I'm now at the stage of migrating software over when I discover I need it, about once every three or four days. I've finished my proofreading for the French Ocaml book, and am awaiting a second chapter assignment. I am now fighting something which may only be a vicious cold, but feels more virulent than that.

That's all the trivia dramatically compressed. Slowing down, I gotta note that this weekend was spent very quietly, as Kelly was having one of her more comprehensive punishments. She threw a wobbly at daycare on Friday which apparently lasted nearly an hour and inconvenienced a lot of folks. I tried to 'talk her down' over the phone, but she was inconsolable.

It seems she won a T-shirt from 'the reptile man', a guy who goes around the schools and daycares showing off snakes, lizards, turtles and such. But the teacher asked her not to wear it right away as it would make the other children feel bad. At this, Kelly launched into her fit, giving the teacher little room to back down.

So Jean and I had a talk with Kelly and decided her punishment. One hour of television a day for the whole weekend, and bed early every night. She got really bored, but we also told her it wouldn't be our job to entertain her during that time. I did take her down to Fry's to buy a new computer game, as she went through all her existing games, educational and otherwise, in her bid to fight off the boredom.

Playing the game turned out to be very enlightening, if a tad disappointing. She reached a point where she decided she wanted to go back to a 'save point', and she accidentally saved over the last save point, preventing her from going back. She completely fell apart! She was sobbing, and quickly escalated to jumping up and down, crying and more or less demanding that we magically restore her save point. We told her to calm down or go to her room.

Times like these remind me why I didn't want to be a parent (no, Kelly wasn't a 'love child', we chose to have her, after much discussion). But eventually she calmed down, and worked out a solution (play another game). Still, it made me question just how effective the punishment had been in making her introspect on her behavior. I did tell her that behavior like that was unacceptable. She understands that it's okay to have feelings, and even okay to cry, but not to try to bully others with her tears. But she still loses control of herself. I hope it's just a maturation issue.