Egg

Time was, when we took you out of the bath or shower we would wrap you up in a towel and say "I'm going to wrap you up like a Roman senator! I'm going to wrap you up like Seneca!" while rubbing you down with terry cloth, and you would giggle.

Lately, at least for the past few months, you prefer to step out of the shower and play "egg." This game requires both parents to be present (as you have sadly informed me on evenings when I've tried to play egg while your Dad was still downstairs). It entails covering you with a towel completely so that you are totally hidden and sitting in a ball. Then I have to loudly discover you are there.

"Lou!" I'll exclaim. "Look at this huge egg I just found!"

"What egg?" your Dad will say, often standing at the sink and brushing his teeth.

"This egg! I don't remember laying an egg. But I must have, because there's an egg right here. Do you think there is a chick inside?"

"I hope so," says your Dad. At the point the egg starts giggling.

"I had better sit on it and keep it warm," I say. I don't actually sit on the egg, but I do hug it and rub its back through the towel with my hands and sometimes shower kisses on its head. At this point, the egg with sometimes start to move.

"Lou!" I call. "The egg! It just moved!"

"It did??" Out pops one Charles foot.

"Yes, look! A little baby chick foot is sticking out!" 

"A little baby chick!" 

"Yes! Look, now there are two little baby chick feet!"

This will go on for some time as we excitedly discuss the imminent hatching of our new little baby chick, and then when you can't stand the suspense one more minute you will throw off the towel and say "Hatch!"

And then I will hug you and kiss you and exclaim over how happy I am that I have a brand new baby chick, and how much I love it. And you will pretend to be a chick who is just born and can't fly, and sometimes I will offer you pretend worms out of my hand, and you will pretend to eat them. And then gradually you will grow and try flapping your wings and eventually you will run naked around the bedroom and then, when it's time to put pajammies on, you will tell me "Now I'm back to being a human."

And then we all go to bed.

I think this game came about because we read a picture book that I remember loving as a child, called How Fletcher was Hatched. This book is not what I would call a "good" book. But it's about a big hound dog who thinks the way to make his favorite girl love him again is to pretend to be a baby chick, and so his good friends Otter and Beaver make a huge egg around him out of clay, and then the egg is discovered and Fletcher keeps very quiet while everyone wonders where it came from, until he hears Alexandra, his girl, crying because she misses Fletcher. And then he hatches! And I think it's also a way for you to process how you feel about not being a baby anymore. Because you are growing and changing every day, and very soon, you will be four years old. My very own most favorite baby chick.