Look at me!

Kelly's gone several evenings a week these days. She's taking a workout class a couple nights and playing soccor one night. For the most part, this means I leave the basement a little early and spend some time playing with Raelin, then get dinner ready.

Last night, Raelin was sitting on my lap in the living room "reading" a book. We have a little wooden duck on a stick that she pushes around the house that was laying next to us, so I picked it up and set it next to her on my lap. She thought that was pretty cool and scooted over to make room for ducky, and proceeded to get all resituated so that ducky could also see the page. This was of course all accompanied by her muttering to herself and ducky "ducky right there, that's right ducky, you sit there, ducky, can you see it ducky? Raelin's reading the book, ducky."

After a few minutes, Raelin spied dolly across the room and piped up "That's dolly over there!" I asked if Dolly wanted to come over and read the book too, which of course was true. So off Raelin trucked to get and retrieve dolly, dragging her back by one of her feet.

She then settled dolly onto my lap, then sat herself back down, fussing over dolly to make sure she was sitting just right. Before we get into the conversation, a little background. Raelin, like most toddlers is somewhat short on attention at times. Sometimes, getting an answer out of her can be challenging, like if she's totally blowing us off. This wouldn't be a big deal except for a) we'd like her to learn to at least respond when people ask her a question and b) if we don't get an answer and assume that means "no", Raelin will almost immediately start asking for whatever it was we were just asking her about. So, when we're in this situation, Kelly or I will gently stop her hands and ask her to look at us "look at me, please, do you want some juice?" Anyhow, back to last night...

R: Raelin's stool
Me: You want the stool?
R: Daddy get it?
Me: Well, Daddy doesn't know where it is. Does Raelin know where it is?
R: (thinking)
Me: Do you know where the stool is?
R: Daddy doesn't know where it is.
Me: That's right, Daddy doesn't know.
R: (to Dolly) Where's the stool, Dolly, where's the stool?
Me: (trying to hide laugher)
R: C'mon Dolly, where's the stool? Where's the stool, Dolly. Dolly, where's the stool. Do you know where it is? Dolly? Where's the stool?
Me: (pick up Dolly and hold her face to me ear) She says she doesn't know where it is.
R: Dolly, do you want to stay on Daddy's lap or get down? Stay up or get down? Look at me! Look at me! Up or down, Dolly? Look at me!
Me: (totally losing it)