crap at the girl thing

I am looking forward to my trip east for a variety of reasons (and dreading it for some too) but one of them is to spend time with my niece and get to know her again. But it might be hard for me, because I seem to be a bit crap with girls.

This is not new, I have said for a while that I am much harsher with the little girls in my life than the boys, and I'm not sure why that is. I mean, one possibility is that, given the small sample group, the boys I have been involved with ARE easier than the girls. And I think there is some truth in that, but I also think I am hard on them.

Tonight I had three kids and a plan to take them to a restaurant opening (which I know sounds nuts, but it was a kid friendly event that friends of the owners invited us to) to see the lion dancers and the fireworks and everything. Now Atti is a very enthusiastic and energetic kid, G is a little bit spectrum-y (maybe sensory something) and noise was likely to be an issue with him a little, and Rio. Who, about 100 meters into the walk down there, fell over (no reason, just fell down) and .... well skinned her knees is actually an over description. Fell on her knees, with no blood or anything. And she promptly turned into Miss Scarlett. The wailing and the carrying on about how much it hurt and that she felt all weird and needed to lie down and so on.... it was pretty dramatic. And annoying. Her wail is kind of stabby-inducing. And the boys had to turn around and go home and they ... well they dealt pretty well with it but still.

I was kind of pissed about it, and I could have been nicer. On the other hand, I had three upset kids that I had to get back home through peak hour traffic and none of them were happy. I got them back, settled the boys in front of a movie and Rio in bed. Still wailing. Rang her mum and she suggested the iPad, which did calm her down.

K, her mum, later was suggesting that she has a low pain threshold and she has low blood pressure and maybe that was what was going on, which is probably true, but I wonder if I would have handled it better if I had known that before. She tends to be a drama queen and has a teeth gritting wail on her which is kind of a trigger for me, so I find it hard to be terribly compassionate when she is doing something I think is faked.

I struggle with her a bit because I can never find a thing to kind of be our thing. She doesn't do or want to do anything I do, so we don't have something in common. She and I clash pretty badly over a few things, and that doesn't help. I care about her a lot, but there is nothing she does that makes me just have that overflowing gush of liking her - so I kind of need to find something here.

I think my niece will actually be easier than Rio, because she does have some stuff that I really like. Well, lets hope anyway.