Annika got to play with her cousins and stay over night there last night. Today, she went boating and swimming and tubing and swimming some more and she didn’t eat much and she got sunburned pretty bad, but only where the sunscreen didn’t stay put. She’s never been sunburned like this ever before and I think she’s learning why it’s not funny to even pretend to slap people who are sunburned.

Tonight her cousin is staying overnight here and everything was going great. They got in bed, I got in bed and was reading and contemplating what to write about (I was thinking about the sanitized news we get and how it might be contributing to our desensitization to violence) when all of a sudden, Annika is sobbing outside my door because she doesn’t feel good. I get up and help her into the bathroom because usually that, plus a cool cup of water, helps. Then my niece was up and frightened because she was awakened by Annika crying and didn’t know what was going on.

Everything was a mess, and I have a headache. Then I saw that the guys had taken the ibuprofen to camp (or hidden it before they left).

It worked out when Annika realized how worried her cousin was, so she dropped the overdramatic sobbing and started to breathe normal, which calmed her down enough to take a sip of water and tell her cousin she was fine. This caused her cousin to calm down a bit, but she really questioned whether or not I was being honest in saying that Annika is fine, just sunburned and probably dehydrated a bit from the day.

The whole thing ended with my niece settling down on the couch to sleep with Perry protecting her in the chair to the right. Annika came to bed with me and zonked out literally in two minutes. I’m up worried about my niece, who is worried about Annika, who is sleeping soundly.

Hopefully this is the end of the craziness. We all need to just sleep until at least 9 tomorrow morning.