The Longest Shortest Time

Happily Ever After; The End.

Pretty soon after Sasha turned three, it dawned on her: she could say no to naps. No more dutifully climbing into bed, listening to music, and passing out for, oh, three hours. Thing is, when Sasha is not sleeping she is constantly moving. And it seems to me that every motion she makes is an active attempt to test boundaries: trying a handstand (and landing flat on her back); flipping over on a swingset trapeze bar (and doing a face-plant in the dirt); leaping in mid-air for monkey bars (and, thank the lord, making it!). When I cannot be watching her every move—when I’m, say, cooking dinner—I ask her to find something to do that will make her happy, but that will also be safe. What winds up happening is, she starts shouting to me from the living room, “Is this safe, Mommy? Mommy, watch this. Is this safe?” If I ask her to give me a minute, the demands to watch either become more insistent or I hear a loud thump, sometimes followed by crying. By the end of the day, we are both exhausted. And my nerves are fried. I decided to institute rest time. Which has basically become Peppa Pig time. She is obsessed with Peppa (says tomato with a British accent!); I am obsessed with Peppa (those voiceover actors!). And we both get an enjoyable way to recharge. Problem is, sometimes Sasha just wants to keep going with Peppa for the rest of the day. And as much as I’d love to oblige sometimes, I feel like I need to draw the line at 3 Peppas in a row. One night, while I was cooking, Sasha was screaming and begging for more Peppa. When I wouldn’t give it to her, she started doing her daredevil gymnastics. I sat her down and reminded her that there are lots of other things she can do to make herself happy while I’m not available to pay full attention to her: read books, play with blocks, play with babydolls. She wouldn’t have any of it. Peppa was all she wanted. I was just about to buckle, when I remembered she has these awesome little story generating cards, given to us by a friend for her birthday. One of the characters on the cards is a pig who looks an awful lot like Peppa, and wears red just like she does. “Why don’t you take those cards, and make up your own story about Peppa?” I suggested. Her answer? Start climbing the stairs on her hands, upside down and backwards. But then at dinner she started telling me about about the baby bunny in our garden. An how once upon a time it liked to do headstands and walk up the stairs backwards and then eat ice cream sandwiches and honey sticks for dinner. Happily ever after. The end. Then she wanted me to tell her a story about the baby bunny. Something that could never EVER happen, she insisted. We swapped back and forth, making up wilder and wilder things about the baby bunny. And always, always, at Sasha’s insistence, we’d start with “Once upon a time,” and end with “Happily ever after. The end.” Next morning in the car, while driving her dad to the train, she piped up with this:

Once upon a time there was a fairy princess. She floated way, way, way into the sky. She fell asleep for a hundred years. Then a monster come along and BITE her. She woke up and saw . . . it was only Cookie Monster. Happily ever after. The End.

Her first real story with an arc. With a plot twist, no less! This is one of those milestones that isn’t an established milestone, but felt huge to me. Not only because telling stories is what I do for a living, but because it felt like a whole new world of communication opened up between us. I don’t know if it is a coincidence, but I think her ability to tell a story also timed out with the beginning of her ability to be a bit more rational, and her tantrums to be more short-lived. What unofficial milestones have felt momentous to YOU?