“What’s that?” Baby asks.
“Bird”, I answer.
“That?” She asks again.
“BIRD.” I reply again.
“THAT???” She asks.
“BIRD!!!!!” I say.
She flips the page.
“What’s that?” Baby asks.
“Flower.”
“What’s THAT??” She asks again.
“Flower.” I respond wearily.
“THAT???!!!” She asks, half screaming.
“IT’S A FLOWER!!!!!!!” I scream back.
“That?” in a smaller voice.
“Flower.” I repeat in a softer voice.
She pauses, thinks, then asks again. “What’s that?”
“Flower.” I respond with clenched teeth for the 7354th time in one day. She gets distracted by a toy for 2 seconds, giving me time to toss the book across the room. Into a pile of books I have also tossed across the room that day. That’s okay, because she finds another book, this one titled Trucks (thanks to my husband).
She flips to the first page. “What’s that?” she asks.
“Garbage truck,” I answer.
You can guess how the rest of that went.
She points to a picture of a farmer on a tractor.
“Daddy!” she exclaims.
“That’s not your daddy, that’s a farmer.”
“Dada”, she says again.
“Please don’t point to random men and call them daddy. I mean, I guess he has the same haircut as your dad…but anyway, HE’S NOT YOUR FATHER,” I say.
“DadadDaDADADADDDY!” She insists, jamming her little pointer finger into the man’s picture.
“Fine.”
She pulls her socks off and demands I put them on her hands. She runs around with her ‘sock hands’, trying to grab toys with them. She eventually tires of the sock hands and whines, then starts screaming. You’d think I soaked them with gasoline and lit them on fire. I take the socks off her hands. She starts screaming louder until I put them back on. As she’s distracted I run for a bathroom break. She sees me heading to the bathroom and frantically searches for a toy.
“Here,” she says, handing me her blanket instead.
“Thanks, I really need your security blanket as I sit here….” I feel vulnerable all of a sudden.
She runs to the end of the bathroom and grabs something out of the cabinet.
“Here,” she says as she proudly hands me two rolls of toilet paper.
“Thanks….uh…can you please go watch Sesame street or something?” I’m holding a blanket and two rolls of TP right now and don’t know whether to laugh or yell or cry. I sit and do nothing. She runs into the living room to watch Sesame Street.
When I come out to the living room she hands me a book.
“What’s this?” she asks, pointing to the page with newfound curiosity.
“Bird,” I reply, as if she were asking me for the first time.
