Frances Friday: Girls' Nights In

This week, one of Erik's infrequent business trips made me a single mother for a few days, and I turned it into our first ever Official Just Us Girls Event. This might bring to mind shopping or glittery nailpolish but ... umm, I took Frances to the library, then we went to the bookstore, then we went out for supper. Yes. I am a barrel of monkeys.

If, by monkeys, you mean books.

It was good. I worked hard at having fun with the alone time, and at being Super Extra Prepared, and it paid off. Also I got to catch up a bit on my sleep.

But Frances was less convinced. Oh, she shrieked and laughed as much as ever during our idiosyncratic games of Hide and Seek (Frances: OK Mummy! Now you hide again, and I'll count to ten! Andrea: But I just hid thirteen times in a row. Frances: I know. But I like to count to ten.) and she lovingly piled the playdoh family on top of the playdoh baby when it was having a tough time napping in the playdoh bed, and she chortled as much during Scooby Doo ("Scooby Doo is a nice dog! He's funny!"). But she missed her Daddy. I could tell when I overheard this conversation between the Dollhouse Daddy and the Dollhouse Son:

DD: Bye bye! I'm going on a long trip.

DS: I'll miss you!

DD: I'll miss you too!

DS: I want to come with you.

DD: No, it's a long trip. You have to stay home with Mummy.

DS: OK. Bye Daddy. (DS walks back into the house.)

DD: Bye, little boy. (DD walks away from the house.)

Besides the internal tick placed on the developmental checklist of the mind ('roleplaying with toys now includes physical movement'), my mammoth intellect guessed that she might be processing the absence of her beloved Daddy (with a nifty sex change operation thrown in for herself for good measure).

And if that doesn't have you melting into a warm puddle of goo, I'll throw in this too:

Picture a tea party. Picture Mummy and Frances sitting side by side with our matching sets of cups, saucers, bowls and spoons. Picture a missing teapot. Picture Frances running to her dollhouse to get her dolls' teapot, when the regular-sized one couldn't be found. Picture her saying, "I'll be right back, Mummy. I'm just going to get the tea."

Andrea: OK.

Frances: I'm home! Here's the tea!

Picture her pouring infinite cups of tea out of a teapot no bigger than her pinkie fingernail. Picture her running back to the dollhouse between each course to put it away ("I'll be right back, Mummy. I'm just putting the teapot away") and then going back to get it again when we'd drained our cups ("I'll be right back, Mummy. I'm just getting the tea"). Picture her running back and forth carrying this teapot for more time than she sat at the table, drinking.

Picture her dropping the teapot on one of these trips, and standing, aghast. "I spilled the tea!" said Frances. "I have to clean it up." Picture her running to the kitchen to get a teatowel, then mopping up the vast lakes of tea that had somehow spilled out of this miniscule teapot after it had filled and refilled our people-sized teacups a dozen times each.

Picture me, sitting, holding my teacup, praising her diligence in cleaning up the tea spill, not giggling.

Posted by Andrea at February 9, 2007 6:34 AM under Frances Friday

EMAIL this entry

(comments fields are below this section)