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| Wobot in his natural habitat |
Emma has been excited to start
getting our house decorated for Halloween.
Last night while my wife was putting Lily to bed, she and I began the set
up. . . orange lights on a faux wrought iron fence, skull heads, jack o’ lantern
lamps, and all the trimmings. Anyway,
one of the decorations is a little animatronic skeleton that does a little
dance to the tune of "Low" by Flo Rida. Last year it scared the shit out of Lily. Or at minimum she was not overly fond of it. She called it "wobot" as
in robot. She didn't recognize it as a
skeleton, which isn't a big deal, but probably is for the best.
So we
set all the decorations up last night, and wobot was sitting next to the
fireplace. He's about 8" tall. It was dark in the family room when we walked
down the stairs. Despite his
inconspicuous placement, the first thing Lily did this morning was walk right
over and start talking about making wobot dance. "I want wobot dance!"
So I made wobot dance, depressing a
somewhat hidden blister switch on his sleeve, and placed it on the table. Next thing I know she was carting the stupid
thing around with her everywhere, a far
cry from last year's "I no wike wobot!", and I'm trying to get
breakfast ready, but every 30 seconds I had to stop because if I didn't, Lily would
just repeat excitedly, "I want make wobot dance!" over and over times forever.
A few minutes later her big sister
Emma came down stairs and since her breakfast wasn’t ready, I pressed her into ‘pressing’
duty. She would ask Lily if she wanted
wobot to sing and then would periodically depress the blister so that he could
continue to sing about apple bottom jeans and the boots with the fur, etc. Which is all pretty adorable. . .
. . . until it was time for breakfast,
because Lily didn't want no damn breakfast, she wanted wobot. And the answer to each of the following
questions: 1) “Lily, do you want a pop tart for
breakfast?”, 2) “Lily, do you want a
strudel for breakfast?”, and 3) “Lily, do you want happy toast for breakfast?” was, “I want wobot.”
Finally to get us to shut up about
breakfast she agreed to "pink pop tart," which we dutifully provided
her on a pink plastic plate. She put
perhaps a quarter of a thimble's worth of poptart in her mouth before she
hopped from her chair and said, "I'm all done now, I want wobot."
We stayed firm, of course, and said,
“First pop tart, then wobot!” (only we pronounced it "robot") and she
continued taking tiny mincing bites and popping up, frantically searching for
wobot, until I finally negotiated one big bite of the damn pop tart in exchange
for the wobot. This was the first step
down the slippery slope that hindsight almost immediately recognized, because
as she took a bite, and I put wobot on the table, and he commenced to get his groove
on. . . and she announced, "I all done pop tart," having gotten what
she wanted all along, tipped the poptart off her pink plastic plate and stood
up.
“No, Lily, sit down,” said my wife. Then, “Keep the pop tart on the plate.”
Lily sat, for perhaps a second,
wobot clutched in her hands while he gyrated, and said again, “I all done pop
tart,” again upending the plate, while my wife repeated "No, Lily, leave
your plate alone". . . lather, rinse, repeat, forever, while Emma took the
opportunity to tell us all a story about a dream she had, as wobot continued to
sing at full volume about how the whole club was looking at herrrrrr. And it all became a little too much for at
least fifty percent of the people in the room . . . my wife and Lily went into
sensory overload.
Wobot was angrily removed from the
vicinity much to Lily’s chagrin. Words
became clipped and terse. All parties
became tense and the morning degenerated to angry sarcasms muttered stiffly under breath and great forced politenesses.
Eventually we got Lily to eat a few grapes,
but she continued her domination of us, fooling us into believing she actually
wanted happy toast*, which I made her in an effort to get something in her system. She
ate about as much of it as she had of the pop tart and then it was time to go
to day care. Not a spectacular effort on
our parts.
So my wife lost it this morning, but
you could tell this story again tomorrow and replace “she” with “he”, and
neither of us would bat an eye, since the person who loses it seems to depend
on nothing so much as what way the wind is blowing, which is why we’re such a
good team, since we have yet to experience a day where we both simultaneously flip
out. I think when I see her lose it, it
scares me and I somehow immediately develop superhuman patience, and the same
seems to go for her.
I didn’t realize how stimulated Lily
would be by wobot. She was completely
out of control (which is ironic since she had us leaping to do her bidding in
an attempt to get food in her). After
the dust settled and the kids were safely at daycare and I drove to work, I
called my wife to give her the daily morning drop-off update. We talked about what we had done wrong and
how her eating is getting a little out of our control again, and we needed to
redouble our efforts.
Tomorrow we’re hiding wobot until after breakfast.
