Today I was working at my desk in the family room while E. played. We were alone together while Dad and A. were out. She'd found an old doll of hers from last Christmas, a cloth one with a floppy plastic head and an outfit you could wrestle on and off, and she was happily testing the tensile strength of the threads that held its arms on when....well.....the inevitable happened.
I dropped what I was doing when I heard her wail, because you can tell immediately when it's not just an "Ow, I pinched my finger trying to close the lid on my fake jewelry box" but rather an "I'm super-traumatized right now cause my baby doll's arm fell off!" I hugged her close and told her it would be okay, and she clung to me and sobbed as if her heart was breaking. And it was.
Finally she was ready to hear about solutions. But to add insult to injury, she developed the need for a major diaper change at this point, so while we talked we took care of that business as well. I explained about my sewing kit, and that Baby's arm could be repaired
in less time than it would take Dora to rescue a pygmie marmoset, even
with Diego's help.
Looking up at me from her changing pad, E. said, "Thank you." She said it in her little helium voice, with her toddler-ish pronunciation, but her tone was very mature and serious, like the tone my grandmother took while thanking her beloved daughters for speaking at their beloved father's funeral. "No seriously - thank you," E. might as well have said. I wasted no time procuring the sewing kit and getting that arm back to rights. Times like this I realize how important my job is.
