I just like to watch you bleed

Anonybabe vacillates between appalling me and making my heart want to break open with love and gratitude.

She's been hitting, biting, pinching to get attention. Once when she pinched me a couple of times as I told her not to, I warned her I was going to pinch her back to let her know how unpleasant it was, then let her have it, hard, on the arm. She gasped, flinched, and moaned for a moment. Then she gathered herself and said brightly, "Mama? Can I pinch you and you will pinch me back?" It's moments like these that steer me away from spanking.

The time-outs in her "little bed" seem to be working somewhat. She followed my script for getting positive attention, asking me "Mama, will you talk to me?" exactly as I'd requested her to do instead of biting me.

I pointed out a little grub wrapped around a blade of grass on Sunday, and carefully scooped it up with a leaf so she could take a closer look. She promptly grabbed it and squished it between her thumb and forefinger, watching its brown juices ooze out onto her hand. I gasped out a "No!" and told Anonybabe that she'd killed the worm. "Oh," she repeated sadly, "I killed it." "You have to be gentle with animals; gentle," I said. "Otherwise you can hurt them." She picked up the grub again and squished it in exactly the same way. She wasn't being willful (for once, there's plenty of that), but she was clinically detached as she crushed the grub. I'm wary of this cool detachment, this lack of empathy.

My faults are legion: I can be breathtakingly self-centered and thoughtless, lethargic, depressive, self-righteous. But inflicting physical pain, on purpose, without regret? Not one of my faults. So I have a hard time seeing this in Anonybabe.