Screaming again

Tonight Janey had a good old fashioned screaming spell. It's been a while since she had one that bad, and I can't say I've missed it. We have no idea what set it off. It might have been anything. We were having a normal night, and she was having a few moments of fussiness and tears, which happen a lot of nights, but suddenly it turned into a full fledged screaming frenzy. It felt like it lasted for years, but it was probably only an hour or so, but far along enough. It's one of the most helpless feelings on earth when she gets like that and there's not a thing I can do, or Tony can do. We went through out mental checklists---food, water, quiet, offering a bath, everything we could think of. I held her and talked about feelings, I told her I'd be quiet and she could tell me if she decided what was wrong or what she wanted, we just lasted out the storm. When I hadn't said anything for a few minutes, she turned to me frantically said said "Why are you crying? Why are you crying?" as if she wanted me to say that, so I did, but of course, there was no answer. Finally, she screamed out she wanted soda. Tony walked to the corner store to get soda, and some Doritos. If anyone is thinking "Jeez, these people are not too big on nutrition", rest assured she usually eats quite healthily, but at that point, we would have given her anything legal she asked for. When he got back, she, still screaming, took some swigs of soda, and now is happy as a clam for the moment having Doritos. So---any lessons learned? No. We still don't know what set her off, we still don't really know what made her stop crying. We probably get overly upset by the crying, because unlike with most kids, we have the memories of the times that the crying didn't stop for weeks. I still wonder some times how we ever lived through that, Janey or any of us.

Hopefully, these spells will become less and less frequent as times goes by. I imagine there might always be some. When you can't really explain what you are feeling, sometimes it's all going to get to be too much, and I think we are all going to have to just be prepared to weather some storms for years to come.