Aaron and I have (for better or worse) chosen very distinct and somewhat cliche parental roles for ourselves. I am in the trenches everyday, wiping the snot and maintaining just enough order to keep the house from combusting. He allows himself to be manhandled, nay physically abused, by our sweet cherub every single day. He also encourages her to torment me with a game only they find funny, called SMELL MY BUM. I am the voice of reason, Aaron is the voice of the absurd. It works out just fine for us most of the time. In fact, when a firmer hand is needed, Mean Daddy is such a shock that Violet straightens up immediately.
Four year olds are notorious for their completely nonsensical dietary quirks. Foods are routinely rejected and Violet reserves the right to stop eating a normally accepted food without cause. My efforts to strong arm her into eating have failed spectacularly. So, I started using deception. For some time I have been sneaking a very thin slice of turkey into Violet's grilled cheese sandwiches. Aaron took issue with this at first and warned me that she would figure it out eventually.
Violet did find out, largely due to Aaron's sloppy execution of the aforementioned hot sandwich. He knew the jig was up and said the first ridiculous thing that came to his mind. He told Violet that the turkey was in fact ground up fairies, the eating of which gave one special, magical powers. I left the room, not wanting to hear the shriek of injustice, or worse, the sound of regurgitation. What happened instead was typical of the funny father/daughter relationship that Violet and Aaron share. She was intrigued, even delighted that she was being given such enchanted food. I am still a little uneasy about the idea of my little girl who enjoys pretending to be a fairy, turning around and committing acts of fairy cannibalism, but it's working. I guess I should expect nothing less from a child who has proclaimed Halloween to be her favorite holiday and whose favorite show is a Discovery Channel cartoon called Growing Up Creepie.
Perhaps it's time to get her a copy of Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book. Clearly, her sense of humor is more sophisticated than I thought.
