Difficult questions

Cora has a knack for coming up with questions that are really difficult to answer. She was practicing piano this evening and was having some difficulty maintaining an even tempo in the song she is working on. I played the piece for her so she could hear how she was playing it currently with the tempo. I've noticed that she doesn't really hear what she is playing because she gets so focused on getting the notes right. She can hear the problem if I imitate how she was playing it and then play the correct tempo and it seems to be helping her to be more steady with her counting.

I played the song and Cora jumped all over me for not having "spider hands" (her term for properly curved fingers). This was a legitimate complaint as I did not have spider hands when I played, but because of my arthritis I really will never have good spider hands again as I am unable to play notes with my pinkie fingers anymore if I maintain better finger position. I told her essentially that -- Mommy can't make spider hands because of her arthritis, so don't try to do the same as my hands, just listen to how it sounds. She went on with practice.

After Daphne went to bed, I was playing Sorry with Cora. Mid-game she asked a very convoluted question about "art." After I got her to give me context I realized she meant "arthritis." She wanted to know what it was. This is one of those questions that I probably should have anticipated long before she was 5 and spent a little time coming up with a good answer, unfortunately I didn't and I think I handled the whole thing a bit lamely. I told her arthritis is a disease. She said "like you are sick?" I told her it is like a sickness you have all the time that makes your bones hurt. She asked "will you still have arthritis even after you die?" Ok, didn't see that one coming at all. That question has so many layers to it I wasn't really sure what to say, so I ended up with something like "no, when you die your body is dead and doesn't really do anything anymore so it can't really be sick after you are dead." I'm not entirely sure that was even what she was asking, but she seemed relatively satisfied with the answer.

The whole conversation took me by surprise, both because I wasn't expecting the question, but also because it made me realize it never really occurred to me to bring this up at any point. I guess in retrospect she was really too little to notice when I was doing injections at home to manage the RA. I've always avoided taking her with me to rheumatologist appointments because they always take ages and involve lots of blood work and injections and wouldn't be at all fun for a child. But it is strange to me that really most of her life that she can probably remember (say 2 1/2 until the present) I've been off meds for pre-conception/pregnancy/breastfeeding reasons and the RA has been pretty unchecked and out of control, but Scott and I never bothered to mention this to her. I think that was a bad parenting move on my part. I think in general I don't bring up my RA a whole lot with most people. I don't particularly enjoy answering tons of questions about it, and I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me or try to keep me from doing things. A lot of that is just habit on my part from childhood I guess, but old habits die hard. I think really it may have been helpful for Cora if I had mentioned this before so she would have had better context for certain things. Maybe she just thinks Mommy is really incapable of simple tasks (opening certain jars, opening juice bottles, etc.) when Daddy isn't around. Or Mommy has some bizarre aversion to physical activity the day before it rains, though I'm sure she hasn't noticed enough of a pattern with that one, but then I worry now if she's just thought I don't want to take her to the playground because I'm lazy or something. I think I could have done a much better job of handling this whole thing now that I think about it. Now I need to figure out how to do a better job from here on out I guess.