The story of lunchtime.

Around noon I tried to get Madeline to eat lunch. I asked her repeatedly what she would like and if she was hungry. I gave her several examples and options. She totally ignored me for twenty minutes. I gave up and went to load the dishwasher.

Five minutes after I started doing dishes, she came into the kitchen and threw herself on the floor and screamed. "Lunch!"

I am trying to be patient. "What do you want? Yogurt? A sandwich? Pancakes?" She pulls out a piece of cheese from the refrigerator and starts to unwrap it. "Okay. You can have a cheese sandwich."

"No. No pancakes. No sandwich. Cheese!"

"You can't have just cheese. You have to eat it on a sandwich."

"No! Madeline open the cheese!"

Repeat this conversation six times. I give up again and go back to doing dishes. Five minutes later Madeline gets in the fridge, pulls out a loaf of bread, and screams, "Sandwich!"

"Okay. Would you like a cheese sandwich or a jelly sandwich?"

"No jelly. No cheese. Bread!"

"You can't have a sandwich with just bread. Would you like cheese on your bread?"

"No. No jelly. No meat. No cheese. Bread!"

Repeat three times until I give up and just make her a baloney and cheese sandwich without asking her permission. She climbs up into her chair, screaming the whole time, and I give her the sandwich and go to make pancakes for myself. Two minutes later, she screams that she wants to get out. I look and she has had one small piece of baloney.

"You didn't eat anything. Will you eat some more?"

"No! Get out!"

"Do you want some pancakes?"

"No! No pancakes! Get out!"

Repeat four times. (Starting to sound familiar?) I give up and let her out and finish making my pancakes while she has hysterics on the floor because she wants her nose wiped and I haven't done it because it's unclear what she wants when she's speaking in gibberish and yelling into the floor. I sit down to eat and ask her if she will stop crying and ask me clearly what she wants.

"Please pancakes!" she sobs.

I get her some pancakes while she cries because I'm breaking it into small pieces and cries because I'm putting syrup on it for her, and cries when I stop putting on the syrup because she's screaming "no syrup!" and starts screaming "please syrup!". We sit down to eat.

We eat for about thirty seconds when she demands I refill her juice. And then has a fit because she wants to put the lid back on her cup herself. And then cries because the lid is on and she can't get it off. And then cries when I take it off.

We have a very pleasant lunch, punctuated by screaming every ten seconds because a) her juice lid is not acceptable b) she needs her nose wiped again c) she wants cookies d)I have two vitamin pills to take and she has only one e) her sandwich is still visible on the other side of the table f) life is a hard, miserable existence and she is clearly being abused.

We finish lunch and I have decided, at this point, that someone must be either sick or exhausted and should go down for a nap early. Madeline screams at me for trying to wash her hands and wipe her nose, and then because her nose isn't wiped, and then because she is tired. Then she runs away while I clean up lunch.

She proceeds to play happily and without complaint with her toys for the next hour and a half, a smile on her face, without once asking me to do anything except try on a pair of sunglasses.

I give up on life, decide my daughter is bipolar, and start searching online for boarding schools that take bipolar two year olds with snotty noses.