Play-time

Tonight after dinner we all went downstairs to play. Clara came and looped her arms around my neck. I gave her a bunch of kisses on her plump little cheeks.

"I don't want tisses and stuff," she said, wriggling away from me. Her hair was soft and windblown and she was wearing one of her favorite shirts: a long-sleeved purple number that has two racehorses on it. Near the bottom of the shirt, a lady wearing a big hat with a purple mesh bow watches the horses from the stands. Since Clara met two real horses at the foothills dog park yesterday, the shirt has special significance. The handy mesh bow on the spectator's hat was used at dinner to stash away unwanted black beans.

Downstairs in the playroom, Clara found a syringe we used to use to administer Tylenol to her when she was an infant and that we've since given to her to "feed" her stuffed animals with. She came at my face with it.

"Mommy, I'm going to get your boogers," she said. After a brief hesitation, I let her stick the syringe a little ways up one of my nostrils. I felt it was only fair, considering I mine the depths of her nose with Kleenex pretty much every day. "Yuck, that's stinky," she said, extracting the syringe and tossing it to the side.

She grabbed a puzzle and whacked Wilbur over the head with it.

"Hey, that's not nice," said Simon. "Better tell Wilbur you're sorry."

"I don't want to be sorry," she replied, looking up at me petulantly through her bangs. Finally, faced with the threat of going to bed early, she sullenly told Wilbur she was sorry. He gazed boredly back at her. Then she began to rummage through the bin that holds all her plastic toy food and cooking utensils for her kitchen.

"Where's my pancake? Mommy, help me find my pancake. I'm going to flip it all around."

I found the top of a plastic hamburger bun and handed it to her. She briskly set to work in her play kitchen, arranging a tiny sieve on the range (which was piping hot, as evidenced by the decal that showed glowing coals under burner stripes). "Mmmmmmm, that's not right," she mused. "That's a bowl." She rummaged around some more and found a skillet to replace the sieve. Her jeans, embroidered with butterflies on the back pockets, were sagging because she'd been running around outside and playing in the dirt all afternoon, and at some point she'd gotten them wet, either in a puddle of rainwater or with the hose.

After the pancake was "done," she brought it to me in the sieve along with a tiny cup of water to be administered by her with a spoon. I pretended to eat the pancake.

"What about me? I want a pancake, too," said Simon.

Clara came to me and reached for the sieve. I protested wildly. Firmly she took it from me and gave it to Simon.

"Here you go, Daddy."

"But what about me? I'm still hungry for pancake!" I complained.

Looking sort of stressed out and exasperated, she pointed to a space on the carpet in front of me. "There it is, Mommy. There's your bowl with the pancake."

"Clearly she thinks I'll be mollified by a pretend pancake," I said to Simon. Daddy wins again.

Next Clara set to work pulling off the black hoodie I wore over my T-shirt. "I'm cold! I don't want to take it off!" I moaned.

"Yes, Mommy. You need to take this off."

She pulled it off my arms and gave me a conciliatory pat on the shoulder with her chubby toddler paw. Then she held up a cup and pretended to spoon-feed me: "Here, Mommy, have some soup," she whispered tenderly.

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Today Clara lost her favorite stuffed dog just as we were getting ready to leave for the park. The stuffed dog was a birthday present from a friend, and came inside a big purse with a pink and white pattern vaguely reminiscent of a Louis Vuitton knock-off. That's right. Not just sort of like the real thing, but sort of like the one that's sort of like real thing. (Like most two-year-olds, Clara is oblivious to the dictates of fashion. She only noticed that it was pink and had a little stuffed dog inside.) The purse has long since been relegated to the toy box, but the dog, called simply, "Doggie," goes with us everywhere. It's replaced "Ugly Baby," the doll she used to haul around.

The dog originally had a battery pack inside his abdomen that made him bark and pant. Clara figured out how to get the battery pack out of its velcro-ed pouch in the dog's belly and started dragging the dog around by it. (The wires connecting the battery pack to the dog itself were long enough for her to designate them "Doggie's leash"). Watching her drag the dog around by its circuitry seemed sort of like watching a perpetual disembowelment.

Eventually, the wires pulled apart from wherever they were connected inside the battery pack. Clara was pretty upset that the dog no longer barked and panted, so I figured the only option was surgery. I opened the battery pack and Simon showed me where the wires should attach to a tiny circuit board. But, he said, they were probably originally welded or soldered on. I tried getting the wires to stay with masking tape and duct tape, to no avail. So I tried melting the wires to the circuit board by holding a match to them. The entire circuit board went up in flame. I didn't think silicon could burn like that.

After I threw away the wires and the partially melted battery pack box, I explained to Clara that Doggie had suddenly become really quiet and shy. In fact, he would probably never bark again, but we could still love him just the same. She was content with this explanation. I couldn't get the hole where the battery pack used to be to stay velcro-ed shut. Doggie started leaking fluff everywhere. Finally I sewed up the hole, but not before he'd lost most of his fluff.

So, Doggie is now very floppy and misshapen. I get him into the wash twice a week, but he's still usually crusty (milk and honey) and covered with dirty Band-aids, and his plastic nose is askew. Still, Clara felt she must have him with her when we went to the park. She wandered downstairs to the playroom, shouting, "Doggie, where are you? We goin' to the park now, awighty? Hey, Doggie, you're missin'!"

Finally she found him inside a tupperware container I use to store her tiny dollhouse furniture in. She'd wrapped him in a handkerchief and put him to bed there a half hour before. When she found him, she scooped him up and cradled him lovingly in her arms.

She said, "Don't worry, Doggie. I'm your Mommy, and all your dreams will come true."