I'm feeling just a bit curmudgeonly today.

Penny woke up at 5:30. I went into her room, and when I gauged from the tone of her voice that she was not going to go back to sleep, I turned on the light and gave her a book to look at, and went back to bed.

She was fine for about fifteen minutes, and then started calling for Matt. Matt went in to her, to try to convince her to quiet down. When he didn't pick her up out of the crib, she started crying. That lasted until six, when the alarm went off and I gave in to go get her. As soon as I appeared, she was fine.

That's something of a repeat from last night, I might add.

We sat down to dinner, and I think what set her off was that she wanted to have both her regular big-girl cup and her sippy-cup on the table, and we didn't allow it. But it didn't matter; once she got going, she cried the entire time Matt and I were eating.

We didn't give in on the sippy-cup, but we did cave when she begged for oranges. She ate the oranges, and then consented to eat her applesauce. As expected, she turned her nose up at the carrots and the hamburger (which is why the hamburger I'd made for her was about the size of a quarter) but she'd stopped crying and was fine.

A bit later, I took her upstairs to take a bath, and she had her usual fun time, "swimming" and pouring water on her toys and playing with the bubbles. After a while, she stood up and threw one leg over the edge of the tub, trying to climb out. "Do you want help?" I asked, and she said yes, so I lifted her the rest of the way out of the tub.

Instant sadness. Wailing and screaming and reaching for the water. "Do you want to get back in the water?" I asked.

She didn't answer. She just kept wailing and reaching. I asked about four more times. The last few, instead of answering, she stamped her foot at me. So I took that to mean she was just feeling ornery, and I drained the tub. The hysteria redoubled, and continued while I wrestled her pyjamas on and didn't stop until we'd gotten downstairs and she'd taken refuge on Matt's lap.

And she's been like that, off and on, for days. It's making us crazy.

This is Two, I guess.

But we're for damnsure dropping her off at my parents' on Saturday when Karen's in town and we go to meet the Hickseses for dinner. I'm not doing any more situations that we can't just walk out of with her anymore, not for a while.

On the plus side, she came home from daycare yesterday with a lollypop that she'd been given as a reward for answering the question, "What's your name?" with not just "Penny," but "Penny Brooks!" That's kind of cool.

Adding to the curmudgeonliness are several really absurd, minor quibbles with the 7th Sea game that I'm not even going to talk about, because they're beyond stupid and childish. But they bother me anyway, especially all stacked up together.

Life is like that.

And to top it all off, I was just reminded that we've got this company-wide all-hands meeting at 10:30 this morning. We'll need to leave the office by 9:30 or 9:45 to be sure to get there in time, and it'll run until 11:30 (if it doesn't run over, which is almost a certainty), after which we may end up eating down in Hampton, and then not getting back to the office until 1:30 or 2.

It's a good thing I wasn't hoping to be especially productive today.

And no one will care if I'm feeling a bit quiet.

--Liz