It’s 9:15pm and it’s light outside. It’s very strange. I don’t know if it’s the streetlight reflecting off all the snow, but the sky seems too bright to just be that. It should be pitch black outside but you can see absolutely everything, with a yellowish tint. Bizarre.
“Kaelin, why is Koren crying?”
“Because I’m making him eat snow.”
One of the things I’m learning about parenthood is that it’s a continual lesson in humility. As a parent, you think you’re smarter, wiser, more sophisticated than your kids. And they constantly prove you wrong about that.
Remember how clever we were about Vitamin Kitty? We did the whole “Bath Time” fast-swap thing for Kaelin’s benefit, because of course she would be devastated if anything ever happened to VK, or - worse - she ever found out that her current VK wasn’t the ORIGINAL Vitamin Kitty.
A few weeks ago, VK got left in the Target shopping cart. Kaelin was heartbroken at the thought, but after a bit of stealthy searching, TA-DA! Mama and Daddo managed to find him! We were unconcerned about pulling another VK out of “the box” because we were pretty certain we would not be seeing the return of the lost stuffed animal.
Or so we thought.
A few days later, Kaelin came down to breakfast with an announcement: “Look, Mama, there are TWO VITAMIN KITTIES! How did I get TWO VITAMIN KITTIES?”
Sure enough, there she was, holding two of them. I stood there, my brain racing, trying to come up with some way to explain this obvious faux pas without crushing her delicate sense of VK Reality.
“Maybe one of them is Vitamin Kitty’s brother that came to visit,” I managed to say before too much time had elapsed.
“No, they’re both Vitamin Kitty. I found this other one in my stool. I forgot I put him there the other day. But why do I have TWO Vitamin Kitties?”
I had nothing. Nada. No more clever explanations to shield her from the truth. How on earth was I going to explain this to her?
“I don’t know, Kaelin. That’s a mystery.”
“Maybe you thought I lost him, so you got me another one.”
Dude. Did I just get schooled by my 4-year-old?
YES. YES I DID.
“You know, I think you’re right.”
I watched her for a few seconds, trying to gauge her reaction to this unpleasant truth. To see if it was going to affect her bond with her Special Friend. I gave up when she stood in the middle of the kitchen, held out both stuffed kitties, and exclaimed, “I have TWO Vitamin Kitties. THIS IS SO EXCELLENT!”