Teenie the Magnificent

After a pretty horrific bath time tonight (in a nutshell, I and the bathmat both ended up nearly as wet as, let's say, whatever the wettest thing you can imagine is), Daniel, the only child to behave, asked to be released from the craziness of his siblings, so he got out first.  Then, after a moment of glancing around and a perplexed, "Where Danyo go?", Max decided he wanted to join, and he rushed out and into his diaper and dripped his way out to Daddy.

This left Caroline in the bath, refusing to get out.  Caroline was, by far, the worst offender in the bad bath conspiracy.  She splashed.  She poured water over the side of the tub.  She yanked on the shower curtain.  SHE PICKED UP HANDSFUL OF WATER AND THREW THEM AT ME.  So I wasn't in the best of moods when she proclaimed she didn't want to get out of the bath yet.  Last bath, she put her hands on the side of the tub and walked her feet up the wall on the other side and held herself up parallel to the water for a split second before I nearly lost my mind and made her get down.  Who knew what she would do!

So I told her I was draining the water and when it was all gone, she had to come out.  Surprisingly, she agreed.  As the water level went down, she rolled over on her tummy and yelled, "I'm a fish! And then opened and closed her mouth in a classic 'fish mouth' that she'd learned from watching Caillou and made some swimming motions and I started to soften on just how mad I was.  Then I took a step toward the tub and heard the mat squish under my foot.  Grrr.

As I was towelling her off, she noticed something shiny on the floor and told me, "Mommy! That's a penny!"  I let her pick it up and she immediately closed her fist around it.  I was inclined to think she was just being greedy, but then she put her hands behind her back, mumbled something that sounded like"akkada" and put both hands back in front of her, smiling at me.

It took a long time to figure it out.

On a different episode of Caillou, he goes to Leo's birthday party where there is a magician who does a trick with a "magic coin" behind his back.  Caillou tries it at home, but it won't work until he says the magic word - abracadabra!

At bedtime, she unearthed the penny again and the boys got involved.  They were very enthusiastic, slapping my hand to tell me which one held the penny, then running me through the steps themselves.  Max made it his own by putting the penny in his hand and then running both hands up to his fuzzy, curly hair and clasping them together on top of his head before bringing them down in fists in front of his chest and asked, "Which hand, Mommy?"  Luckily, they think it's amazing when I guess right or when I guess wrong, so I didn't have to work very hard.

My favorite moment, though, was when Daniel was trying his hand at the trick.  He put the penny in his left hand, put his hands briefly behind his back, and flung his fists back in front.  I asked him, "Oh no! Which hand is it in?" and he giggled and, with his right hand, pointed at his left one and answered, "This one!" and then opened his little left fist to show the penny.  And he celebrated that he'd guessed correctly!