Last night saw the return of a game I thought she'd totally forgotten,
roll across the bed and get stuck so I can save you. It was an endless fascination when she was about 2 1/2.
I thought she'd forgotten it like an even earlier classic,
sit in the recliner while I push the footrest up and down for 20 minutes. That one eventually accumulated so much baroque filigree (push down the footrest, climb over my lap onto the back of the chair, pretend it was the beach and jump into the 'water', swim around to the couch/desert island & rescue the starfish princess) it collapsed under it's own weight and fell out of the rotation.
She would always introduce the subject by asking if you wanted to hear a secret, then leaning over, cupping her hand around her mouth and whispering "I roll you and you get stuck!"
She's still a little shaky on the whole 'secret' thing.
She'll confide secrets like "how about you get me some ice cream!" and "let's go to the big cafe!"
After the rolling she improvised another one that had us howling.
The wife was reading her a book, but the Fiend kept demanding that we look at her yoga postures, which were accompanied by insane faces and protrusions of the tongue.
So we'd laugh, and she'd immediately demand "keep reading!"
After a couple of minutes, she'd say "ok look at me!" and kill us again with some new pose/face combination.
As usual with her games, the pace increased as she got more comfortable with it.
Eventually she reached the tempo "keep reading OK look at me! keep reading OK look at me! keep reading OK look at me!"
When we'd finally been reduced to writhing on the bed like beached fish gasping for air, she stood up, put her hands on her hips and administered her coup de grace; declaring
"That's what
I'm talkin' about!"
I think I pulled something in my ribcage.
