Learning to Count

This morning was a rare opportunity to lay in bed with nothing pressing on us but The Boss as she bounced all over our duvet-covered limbs. The Partner was on edge, ready to double over in protection of the family jewels if one of The Boss's feet landed in the wrong place. I vacillated between trying to fall back asleep and making the most of this just-the-three-of-us time. Rain beat against the roof.

"I'd hate to be any shopper waiting in line for Door Buster sales at 4 this morning," he said.

"Amen." I nodded in happy acknowledgement of our dry and uncrowded environs. Relatively speaking, anyway. The Boss did a flying squirrel and landed between us.

"Hey, The Boss's friend B. counted to 200 the other day in the car when I picked her up for a playdate," I mentioned to The Partner, apropos of nothing but the nagging need I have to compare my kids to every other child within a five year age radius.

"Let's hear how high you can count," The Partner prompted. Numbers are not The Boss's strong suit. She's like me in that regard.

The Boss obliged her father. She stumbled here and there, requiring a bit of help each time she hit a new group of tens.

"18, 19, 11, 20," she said.

"No, not 11. It's 19, 20," The Partner got her back on the right track. She chugged along until 29.

"Thirty," he prodded. Then, as something of an aside: "It should really be threety, shouldn't it?"

We giggled, me moreso than The Boss. I was embarrasingly amused. "Yeah, and twenty should be twoty! " I squealed. "Twoty-one, twoty-two..." I couldn't go on. I rolled over, incoherent, on twoty-two.

The Boss pulled energy from my laughter and threw herself in a gleeful heap near where The Partner's hip rested alongside mine. "Ah, the fun of the times," she sighed as she settled into the feathery nest of down. "The laughter of the family."

The Partner and I looked at each other over The Boss's head, shaking our heads and laughing out loud. We do this a lot. She is always saying things that bring out our mutual amazement in this thing we've created. Ah, the fun of the times, I repeated, just to hear it again. The laughter of the family. The Boss snuggled into our giggling mass.

Sometimes I think our daughter is four going on twoty-nine.