A perfect fit

As the away-from-home parent, I get all the clingyness from my little girl when I do show up at the end of the day. Often I am dragged into Archer's room and tucked into his bed, where I can drowse while Cady Gray shoots her squishy soccer ball into the Nerf hoop hanging over Archer's closet door. (In a little more than a week of this behavior, she's developed a formidable baseball-pass-style set shot. It is hard to pretend-sleep when she's winging that ball off the closet door in a repeated series of rather loud thumps.)

When Archer tries to come into his own room, Cady Gray shoos him off with "No, Archer. This is only for two people," or "This is only for girls." Sometimes when I'm unavailable for bed duty, Noel subs for me, although Cady Gray is dissatisfied with the way he fits onto Archer's twin mattress; he is "too big," while I'm deemed "a perfect fit."

Her other favorite game, on the cusp of age three, is to play cat or dog. Actually, she usually wants me to play cat or dog, but I'm often able to reverse it so I get to stay human. She's a very quiet but insistent pet, often woofing out surprisingly cogent answers to questions put to her in English, bringing over books to be read in her little paws, and despite the lack of articulation in her extremities, pointing to where she wants her owner to go.

Tonight she was playing cat before dinner, meowing gently to beat the band. To everyone's relief, she reverted back to a little girl midway through the meal ("Mom ... I'm Cady Gray again"), but not before Archer observed:

"Dad, meow is the music of cats. And hello is the music of people."