The Little Pirate has this weird habit of carrying all her things with her from room to room. When she shows up in the middle of the night and wants to get in bed with us and we’re too tired to argue, she inevitably gets out of bed after we let her in, just to run down the hall to retrieve 4 or 5 more clubgoers to let them know she got past the Velvet Ropes. Then Teddy arrives, the Zebra, the meowing cat, blankie and sometimes her plastic cell phone. It’s aggravating as all hell. For three days I was hearing this meowing and I had no idea where it was coming from. I finally found a tiny stuffed cat in between our sheets and comforter.
When we moved to the new house we decided that the entire house would not be a toy zone. Only a few toys are allowed downstairs now at a time since the Pirate has a room in which to store all her crap. This does not prevent her from slowly bringing 3 or 4 things down at a time. I’ll sneak them back upstairs and she’ll know which toy is missing and off she goes to get it back. We expect her to just get a shopping cart like the homeless people have to carry all her worldly possessions.
Tonight as she was jumping on the diving board over my last nerve I said, “Little Pirate! Do not bring any more toys down here!”
She looked at me with a sneaky face and said, “Why?”
There it is. We’ve been waiting for it, and it finally arrived. “Why.” WHY??? Ugh.
I had a perfectly good answer. Because there’s too much stuff downstairs and she doesn’t clean any of it up and there’s no room to walk. She looked right at me and said, “Why?”
Cool Dad turned to the side so he could snicker. Yeah yeah yeah. Real funny Cool Dad. Wait till you lose your cool and you’re saying “Because I said so, that’s why.”
