A nightly ritual at our house is the Cleaning of The Living Room. This activity, aimed at cleaning the messes of the day, is often combined with another family ritual - The Fight to Get Anna to Clean Up. She hates cleaning up, and she will fight us with everything she can come up with to get out of it - including her wild imagination.
Tonight her father was directing clean-up time while I made dinner. He asked Anna to pick up a particular toy and take it to her room. She immediately protested: "I CAN'T!"
"Oh really?" my husband replied. "And why is that?"
"Because Baby Sara will be MAD at me!"
Now lest you think that we have added yet another tiny member of the family while you weren't looking, I should explain at this point that Baby Sara is Anna's favorite, most special baby doll.
"Really? And why will Baby Sara be mad?" my husband queried.
"Because she's asleep and I might WAKE HER UP!!"
Well, we wouldn't want to wake up Baby Sara, now would we? After all, it is a hard and fast rule in our house: NEVER WAKE A SLEEPING BABY.
In this case, however, an exception would have to be made.
"Why don't you just go in very quietly," my husband told Anna, trying not to laugh.
"Ok Daddy," Anna whispered, and tiptoed off to her room to put away the toy.
Sean has since wondered if we might use Baby Sara's emotions to our benefit in the future. I pointed out that really only Anna knows how she feels about things, so that plan might backfire. We'll have to see. In the meantime -shhh! We mustn't wake Baby Sara!
