Daddy Daughter Time

Now that Paige is a nonstop chatterbox (she's always been a talker, now she just inserts actual words) here's an average chain of events and conversation when I'm babysitting.

Paige and I, sitting in the family room when she says, "Dah-rums?" She takes my hand and leads me to the door of the basement. We go downstairs.

Paige sits at the drumset and pounds away. She starts out with the drumsticks and I use the brushes. Every few seconds she says "trade" and we switch. When she hits the cymbals especially hard she looks at me and says "Good dah-rums?" I nod in approval. She gets bored after a few minutes and says, "Nino?"

Nino is her word for Play-Doh. We walk back upstairs and sit at the kitchen table to play nino. She sees the purple container and says "par-ple, par-ple, PARPLE!!!" I mold the play-doh into various shapes and she tells me all the names - circle, square, heart, diamond, etc. She can nino for quite a while, but she will invariably catch a glimpse of her halloween bucket on top of the fridge. At which point she says, "Can-dy?" I say no. "Can-dy?" No. "'Nacks?" (fruit snacks) No. "Shapes?" (her Baby Einstein Movie about shapes) No. "Yion?" (lion, a reference to the lion in the same movie) No. "Buh-bles?" I concede.

We go upstairs and I put her in the empty bathtub and blow bubbles at her. When she's had enough she says "Count?" which means she wants to count all of the assorted shampoos and soaps in the bathroom. I put them on the side of the tub and quiz her on the colors. She then counts each of them and tips them back over at me. She will play this game forever. The only way to make it end is for me to say to her "brush teeth?"

We stand and brush our teeth together - she will not brush hers until she sees that I brush mine. Her brushing consists of chewing on the bristles or eating the toothpaste off the brush. When we're finished, I rinse her mouth out three times (she sticks her tongue out and I put water on it), and then I pat her mouth dry. "Brush teeth" is officially done by Paige exclaiming "All clean!" At this point she looks at me and says "Nino?" And we start all over again.