Sadie

She'll say to me, in the very early morning, "I can't get these socks on without your help," and then she'll burst into tears.

Sometimes, she'll hear my footsteps coming down the stairs and she'll begin to get excited, holding her hands up near her mouth, saying, "who's coming? who's coming?" And then when I arrive she'll say, "It's the daddy monster," and then she'll begin telling me about the bagel she is eating.

I'll say to her, "It's time to go upstairs for a bath. She'll say, "No. I'm not taking a bath tonight." Usually, if I wait a couple of minutes or so, she'll say that she's ready to upstairs to take a bath, but she'll say, "Can I bring this guitar with me?" And I'll say yes, and we'll prop it up against the toilet in just the right position so it can watch over her. She'll say, "No splashing in this bath, because we don't want to get it wet." Later, she'll dump water over her brother's head, and look at me blankly, then cry when the water is poured over her head. "I don't like the water poured over my head," she'll say.

In the evening, before bed, I'll say, "pick out three books. I'll read you three books."

"Two books, daddy," she'll say, negotiating in the wrong direction. "You read me two books."

"Okay," I'll say. "I'll read you two books." Later, when I get up to leave, she'll say, "No. Three books daddy. Three books." Later, when I get up to leave, she'll say, "Just one more."

Sometimes, out of the blue, she'll say, "I love you daddy." Sometimes, I'll think that she's saying it to me only to discover that she's holding her little pink blanket that she calls "yaya" very tightly, and reminding "yaya" that she loves her.

Most days when i get home from work, she gives me a hug. Sometimes, she says, "Daddy you need to take off your shoes."

Sometimes, I pick her up from school, and we have conversations like this: 

s: Why is it better to love than to not love.

M: It gives the world hope. It makes it more beautiful. s: Like the doughnut shop? M: Yeah, like the doughnut shop.

Sometimes, I'll pick her up from school and refuse to let her walk on the balance beam, a row of bricks three feet off the ground, and she'll start screaming in the way that you know people do when they discover that their whole life has been a sham. Later, she'll say, "I'm okay now. I took a deep breath." 

On the nights I work late, I often awake to the sound of her arguing with her mother about what clothes she'll wear to school. "I want to wear this dress," I'll hear her say. "But it's winter," Steph will answer. "It's too cold." 

"But I want to wear this dress," she'll counter, and it's hard to argue or sleep with that kind of logic. 

She says pink is her favorite color, though she'll sometimes change that to purple. Kids are fickle. 

This evening, after Stephanie had to help her properly brush her teeth when she wouldn't cooperate, she walked into her room and said, "That's humiliating." Though it came out as three separate words that could be construed as humiliating. 

We had guests over today and when they arrived she kept saying, "Welcome. Come in and join the fun!" 

For some reason, whenever she starts touching her brother's head gently with an object, she can't resist increasing the pressure or tap until she asked to stop, he crawls away, or begins to cry. 

Tonight, an hour after she'd been put to bed, she was at the top of the stairs screaming in fear. She'd seen a skunk in a Curious George video who wandered around the house, and she was lying in her bed, thinking about that skunk, worried that it would break into our house and terrorize her with its stinky tail. 

The other day, after making eggs and showing her the difference between the white and the yolk, I said something strange and then followed it by telling her that I was "Only yolking." 

She started laughing and said, "Daddy's joking, which marks the first time in her life that I have witnessed her understanding a joke without being told. 

In the bath tonight I asked her how she got to be three so fast. I asked her, "Did it happen very quickly? Did you just spring up overnight, or did it take a long time?" 

"It took a long time," she said, reassuring me in my old age. 

The other night, she found a half-eaten plate of my dinner on top of the fan and brought it to me. "Daddy, you forgot your dinner," she said, handing it to me. Then she put her hand on my leg and patted it reassuringly, "Don't worry, daddy, if you eat your dinner, you can have dessert."