Having Learned That If She Doesn't Ask, I Can't Say No...

I finally picked up a late Valentine’s Day package from Alpha Grandma this afternoon. In it were three boxes of chocolates (which I quickly confiscated until Friday), a heart red sweater for me (awww, she really shouldn’t have), two shirts each for the kids, Spiderman socks for Boy, and three pairs of undies each for the girls.

Boy looked this gift horse directly in the mouth and asked, “Where are the toys?” Elder Miss coolly informed me that the brown shirt was pretty but I’d have to buy her a pair of pants to match them. Missy simply swooned.

Dora panties and a bright pink shirt featuring Dora in a pair of sparkly fairy wings? The haute-est of haute couture in Missy’s world, I tell you what. She quickly gathered these rare treasures unto her bosom and ran upstairs shouting, “I want to cuddle whiss ‘zem, that’s because I want to!” Elder Miss and Boy followed her up saying something about catching the last episode of Power Rangers or whatever. And there they all stayed, blessedly out-of-sight/out-of-mind for the next hour and a half. Giving me ample time to—I know I should say ‘do the dishes, wash the floors, fold the laundry, and pour my husband a second martini’—but I was, in fact, trying to break through to the next, and final level, of Over the Hedge on EM’s Nintendo. Ninety freakin’ minutes, and I still couldn’t find all twenty of those GOD DAMN light bulbs! I’m tellin’ ya’, there’s only nineteen of them. 19. Not 20. Just 19. So LET ME PASS ALREADY! Stupid fucking game. GRRRRRRRR!

Anyway, so 7:30 rolls around, and I call the kids down to brush their teeth and get ready for bed, as per our usual arrangement. Only tonight, instead of Missy barreling down the stairs first shouting that she wants to brush her teeth ‘self’, EM and Boy come a-sauntering in their typical distracted fashion and are half-way done with their nightly ablutions before I hear Missy even make a move in the direction of the stairs.

“Missy, you need to hurry a bit,” I warn in my semi-stern, you’re-okay-for-another-thirty-seconds-but-then-I’m-really-going-to-lose-my-shit voice, “It’s getting late. We’ll miss reading time if you don’t slap a rush on it.”

“Oh-kaaay. I coming,” she mutters, with more than a touch of reluctance in her voice.

When she finally gets into the bathroom—head hung, eyes averted, feet shuffling in the slow, measured way of the guilty—I see that, not only is she wearing her new Dora shirt, but also the pink-ruffled shirt from the package under it. And the hot-pink sweatshirt I sent her to barnehage in under that, as well as the wool undershirt I sent her to barnehage in under that. And, as I start to undress the bottom half of her, I note the jeans and tights she had on earlier—only I’m pretty sure that they weren’t backwards when I put them on her—under those, she’s got all three pairs of new Dora underwear, plus two of the pairs of Dora undies she got for Christmas, plus the faded pair of My Little Pony panties she put on this morning.

What could I do but laugh?

“It’s a bit much, don’t you think, honey?” I chuckle.

Missy’s eyes go from guilty to defiant in a flash, “I has to has Dora on! That’s because I LOVE HER!”

All of which is to say, thanks for the new clothes Grandma, much appreciated.