She looks so peaceful here, doesn't she?

Looks can be deceiving.

The evening was going well enough. She was in a good mood when she got home from school, although she was a bit impatient for dinner. She kept trying to come into the kitchen while I was cooking. Although in her defense, I have to admit that I was making dinner a bit later than usual. I was trying to have it ready when Daddy came home (6:15 p.m.).

She ate well enough (okay, maybe that's an understatement, but this IS Syrina we're talking about here!!!), and went into her room to "play."

I noticed she looked a bit tired about halfway through doing the after-dinner clean-up, so I stopped for a minute to change her and put her in some jammies.

She fell asleep, but woke up just as I was about to start vacuuming the living room (which happens to be right off her bedroom). She seemed fine at first - she was even grinning at me from her bed as I was plugging in the vacuum cleaner.

I only had the living room about 1/4 of the way done when I started hearing some strange noises. It sounded almost like the way she cries, but when I looked at her, she seemed to be just sitting on her bed looking at one of her blankets (she likes doing that; she likes the patterns). So I didn't think anything of it and kept vacuuming. Then I heard it again. Louder this time. So I went into her room.

It was her.

She was shaking like a leaf and making noises like she was crying. There were no tears, but the sound was the same. When I asked her what was wrong, she got up out of bed and started walking around. Every time I tried to ask her what was wrong, she'd walk away from me. She wouldn't even let me give her a hug (which she usually DOES do). It went on for about 10 minutes. She had this strange look on her face, as if she was terrified.

At one point, I realized that her teeth were chattering, so I put a cardigan on her (which you can see in the picture). After that, she seemed to calm down.

It's just that even with all her progress, things like this still happen. And I feel so utterly useless when they do. I was in tears, because there was something obviously wrong, but I didn't know what it was, and she couldn't tell me. It's times like this when I would gladly give up 10 years of my life just to know what was wrong so I could fix it.

I'm just grateful that these kinds of things don't happen all that often anymore. There was a time when she'd be like this at least once a day. But not anymore. THANK GOD!! But when they DO happen, I feel about as useful as a square basketball.