Author's Note
I am completely a closet brony. My wife knows I write stories related to a TV show, but not which one. She's read a few de-ponified versions. And she knows that I review stories and approve them for a feature website.
It used to be I had to watch the show online, because we didn’t get Hub, but partway through season 3, Dish Network added it to our lineup. But I still had to watch it online mostly, because the show’s not on at a good time for getting a TV to myself where nobody will see.
Well, imagine my surprise when I got home from work one day, and my four-year-old son (three at the time) had it on downstairs. It’s gotten to be one of his favorites, and my wife and I often watch it with him. She likes it, though I'm still in the closet regarding how much I actually do related to ponies.
Anyway, my son always wants me to play ponies with him when I get home from work now. What follows is a narrative of our adventures.
My Domestic Equestria
The first pony my son got was one of the small five-inch Funrise plushies of Applejack, the ones with the ribbon-style hair. They’d just released the one with the hat, and he’d surely complain if she didn’t have a hat.
Applejack would hop around on her farm (the couch) and speak some, occasionally prompting a response, but mostly talking about how her agricultural exploits were going. Before long, she’d start to notice that apples would disappear from the farm. We needed to investigate!
The thief was usually Mysterious Jack, whose description very closely matched my son’s jack-in-the-box, though in pony form. Orange and yellow hair. That’s become the key phrase.
“He stole the apples!” Applejack shouts, and I glance around the den.
“I don’t see them,” I say. “Do you know who took them?”
“Mysterious Jack!”
I echo the name in exasperation, adding, “We’d better get him!”
And so we take several laps around the downstairs, weaving through the dining room, around his train table, and doing figure-eights between the kitchen table and island. It’s still the middle of winter (Applejack was a Christmas gift), so it’s a nice way to keep warm, as the thermostat’s only set to 70.
Sometimes, he gets mad because I didn’t run the way he wants me to, which often results in Applejack getting thrown to the ground and my son going to tattle to Mommy that I’m not playing right. I usually just let the game be over at this point, since he’s got issues with being bossy, and giving in to him isn’t going to help.
But today, no such disagreements happen. We’re having trouble catching up to Mysterious Jack, though. “Do you have your lasso?” I ask.
Sometimes Applejack has lost it, or sometimes she’s left it at the farm. But she has it now, and she throws it at the perpetrator, which somehow involves launching her entire body forward through the air, then skidding to a halt on the floor. She’s snared her prey, and we cart him off to jail.
Under interrogation, Mysterious Jack reveals that he didn’t take the apples; Mysterious Dig did. With a new suspect in mind, we go on patrol again. Mysterious Jack stays behind in jail, though. Known apple felons always point hooves, and the DA’s not ready to cut him loose yet.
The entire Mysterious clan shares a common hair color, apparently, as we’re still looking for orange and yellow hair. We sit on the stairs, staking out the den. Applejack stays below one of the steps, so nopony in this rogues’ gallery might spot her and run. I watch through the railing and tell her whom I see.
“There’s one with orange and… black hair,” I say.
“No, you’re looking at the dog,” Applejack answers with a bit of a giggle. I wish she’d take this seriously. We have a crime to solve, after all.
“I see one with orange and… blonde hair.”
Never mind that blonde and yellow are about the same thing. It doesn’t count. “You’re looking at me!” Applejack says, and I have to admit she’s right.
Maybe that’s why Applejack is his favorite pony. Blonde, southern accent, strong sense of family. She reminds him of Mommy. If he doesn’t want to eat his apple slices with dinner, we’ll tell him that Applejack would want him to, and he shouldn’t disappoint her, right? They soon disappear.
“Okay, I see one with orange and… blue hair.”
“No, you’re looking at the TV!”
I don’t actually see any such character on the screen, but it doesn’t matter. “I see one with orange and… yellow hair!”
“Orange and yellow?”
“Yes, orange and yellow.”
“That’s Mysterious Dig! Get him!”
We later move on to Mysterious Clownder and Mysterious Plownder, and even Mysterious Jack’s girlfriend tries her hoof at grand larceny, though she apparently doesn’t warrant a name. It’s rare that we actually catch one of them, but the next day, the orchards teem with apples once more, so what does it really matter?
My son often wants Mommy to stop at McDonalds so he can get a Happy Meal, and she’ll oblige once in a while, if they’re on the way home from a swim lesson, playdate, or some other activity. It was March, I think, when the Happy Meal toys were ponies. They ask whether we want the girl or boy toys. Mommy declines to name a gender, saying only that we want the pony toy. I even saw a news article not long ago that McDonalds would stop asking boy or girl, in order to avoid perpetuating gender stereotypes. But apparently it wasn’t a corporate-wide thing, just one particular franchise.
So during March, my son acquired the Happy Meal toys of Princess Twilight Sparkle, and a couple weeks later, Pinkie Pie. Rainbow Power versions, I should add, which explains the yellow streaks through Pinkie’s hair. Most of the stickers that come with Twilight don’t have an obvious place to go, and take up too much space to cluster them around her hooves, as the art from the advertising shows. So I mostly put them on her legs, but they don’t stick well enough to curl around limbs that small. Every day, the edges peel up, and I smoothe them back down. Six months later, they barely hang on anymore. I'd pull them off, but my son might complain. I never did put the stickers on Pinkie, which ends up being a good decision.
He continues to choose Applejack. That’s his favorite. I get the other two.
The Mysterious clan still tries to pull off their apple capers from time to time. Twilight takes my post now, peering through the railing for likely suspects while Applejack hides behind her usual step and Pinkie conceals herself behind one of the railing posts. I add a few more colors to the mix.
“I see somepony with orange and… pink hair!” Twilight says.
“That's Pinkie!” Applejack says, shaking her head at Twilight’s inability to focus.
Twilight looks Pinkie’s mane up and down. “Oh, yeah. That’s just Pinkie.” Back to her vigil. “I see somepony with orange and… purple hair!”
“Twilight, that’s your own hair!” Applejack laughs out loud. As much as she’s chastised Twilight for shirking her duty, she doesn’t seem to take it that seriously, either.
Curling her tail around to give it a look, Twilight says, “Oh. Yeah, that’s just my own hair.” She keeps staring straight ahead, oblivious to their predicament.
“I see somepony with orange and… yellow hair!” And the chase is on again.
But more often now, Applejack wants to go to the train station. Sometimes she takes everypony in her car or her dump truck, but most often, we just walk there. They sit on the train table while the trains drive by, their engines exhorting the ponies to notice some grand feat or how fast they can go. Pinkie gets an idea.
Several of the train cars actually haul cargo that would make good cake ingredients. One car has a crate of eggs, two have barrels of flour from the windmill, and one has an oversized can of milk. A few others have generic crates, which could carry anything.
Thomas, James, Percy, and most of the other more popular engines lie scattered in the middle of the table. Ivo Hugh or sometimes Murdoch likes to pull the cake train.
“Can you bring me an empty cake box, Mr. Ivo Hugh?” Pinkie asks.
“Sure!” he answers. He never complains. He’s a useful engine, as Sir Topham Hatt would say. And he hauls an entire empty train around the table just to retrieve one of the crates and deliver it to the station.
“Thank you,” Pinkie says, “and I’ve finished with this barrel of flour. You can take it off to the recycling center.”
And so he does. Then he parks and awaits the next order. He can get bored if Pinkie doesn’t give him enough to do, so she comes up with a container of this or that that’s empty now or needs replenishment. A few logs for the oven, perhaps, a repurposed treasure chest from the Fisher-Price castle. It’s even served as Twilight's castle on a few occasions, but not often—castle is a Mommy game, while ponies are a Daddy game, inasmuch as ponies often serve more as an excuse to get me to the train table lately.
Gordon comes along momentarily with a passenger car full of party guests. “You can drop them off over by the water tower,” Pinkie tells him. “I’ll send the cake over there when it’s finished.”
While we’re waiting on the cake, my son invites Twilight over to the bookshelf. “Do you like books about trains?” he asks her.
“Of course. I like books about anything,” she answers. He takes one off the shelf and shows her all the pictures, and she finds them all suitably impressive.
It’s May, and about a month until my son’s birthday. I’ve looked around at Target (decent selection) and Wal-Mart (not as good) for some more plushies, but by now, the Rainbow Power version of the plushies has replaced the older ones. I have no idea whether Rainbow Power will continue to be a thing into the next season, and such details tend to bug him. The only other ones they have are minor characters he might not recognize or even care about: Trixie, Cheerilee, Octavia, Vinyl Scratch. So, nothing new. I remember seeing the Ty Beanie Babies ones at Hallmark, but they had kind of creepy-looking plastic eyes, and after they sold out of the initial batch of just Twilight, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie, they never restocked anyway. Of course, I’m looking for Applejack.
My wife gives me a tip that she heard the gift shop at Cracker Barrel carries them. So on a weekend when I’m out running errands anyway, I stop by. Just me for a few days—the wife and son are visiting her parents. So I go into Cracker Barrel. Not too many options here in a pretty rural setting.
They do, in fact, carry the Beanie Babies, and they have embroidered eyes now that look much better than the older ones. But they only have three in stock: one Rarity and two Applejacks, one with a crunched tag. Then behind me, I notice the larger Aurora plushies on the shelf. They’re pretty nice-looking as well, though they have sparkle effects on the manes and tails, a different kind for each. One by one, I pull them out and have a look. Good thing the toy section is tucked back in the corner, away from the register and restaurant entrance. I wander over to a different area when another customer comes browsing, but he doesn’t stay long.
Of course, I check Applejack first, but the sparkle effect on her has a weird shape to it. I’ve already decided to get the Beanie Babies Rarity and the Applejack with the intact tag, but I still have to decide whether to get one of the Aurora plushies, too. By now, my son only lacks a Rainbow Dash and a Fluttershy, and I think he’d like Dash better.
The toy section does, however, sit near a door back into an employees-only room. One of the sales clerks walks past. “Funny,” she says, “you don’t look like a My Little Pony fan.”
I smile back. “You’d be surprised,” I want to say, but I just give a little laugh. “Kid’s fourth birthday coming up,” I explain, deliberately keeping any indication of gender out.
“Ah. I’d recommend Rainbow Dash. She’s the most popular.”
I’ve pretty much settled on her anyway, but I dawdle a little longer—a few customers are at the register, and I don’t exactly want to stand in line holding three ponies. But when I make my move to the empty counter, another party slips in ahead of me, and it takes forever for them to split their check. I stand there with the ponies vaguely behind my back.
When it’s finally my turn to pay, I can’t tell if the cashier looks at me funny, but I just act like nothing’s wrong. Maybe fifteen years ago, it’d be hard to pull it off, but at thirty-eight, I certainly look the part of a parent buying something for his child.
We take our usual Fourth-of-July trip right after my son’s birthday (incidentally, the same day as mine), and I want the newness of his other new toys to wear off anyway, so I plan to give him this batch after we get home. But I want to work on him first.
Lately, he keeps bearing his weight on Applejack when he climbs the stairs or gets on the floor. She’s already getting a little floppy, and I want her to last. When they switch over to the Rainbow Power version, I might not be able to replace her easily. So I encourage him to be careful, but he starts using that as an excuse not to play with her anymore.
More than a month after his birthday, we take our posts on the stairs again. My wife is out at her monthly game night with her friends. “I see,” Twilight says, “somepony with orange and… blonde hair!”
“That's me!” Applejack says. For the second time.
“I know,” Twilight replies. “There’s another one over there.” Twilight points her nose toward the closed office door. My wife has a number of Beanie Babies from back when they used to be A Thing. My son is used to seeing them in baskets up in our bedroom and knows that they aren’t for rough play. In fact, I’ve pointed them out to him a few times over the last couple of days.
“That heart-shaped tag? That’s how you know they’re special. You don’t take that off.” Normally, he wants tags removed immediately. “They can sit up on your dresser and look nice, but you can’t play with them that much." He seems to understand. What he doesn’t know is that after everyone else has gone to bed each night, I’ve gotten those three new ones out and had them next to me in the chair while writing my ponyfics or reviewing stories for Equestria Daily.
So I wander into the office and come out with Applejack. She doesn’t have a hat, and my wife thinks that will be a deal-breaker. “It’s another Applejack,” I say as I come out of the office with her.
“I already have one of those,” he answers, looking unimpressed.
“I know, but one’s to play with, and the other’s to sit on your dresser.”
He has no sense of hurting anyone’s feelings yet, either mine or Applejack’s. “I don’t want one on my dresser.” That doesn’t surprise me—he’s very particular about what goes where in his room. “Maybe Applejack could just go live back in your office,” he adds.
I bet that if I just put her up on his dresser without him noticing, he’d get used to it. So with that as a working plan for later, I return Applejack to the paper bag (wow, someone still uses those?) and try the next one. “How about Rarity, then?” I ask, and his eyes light up when he sees her.
“Rarity!” Applejack cries. “Come down here and hide with me. We’re looking for Mysterious Jack.”
Rarity stands one step higher and surveys the potential hiding place. “I don’t know. It looks kind of dirty down there,” she says with a toss of her mane.
Maybe because Applejack’s his favorite and maybe because of how I told him he’d have to be careful with the Beanie Babies, he wants me to play her part. Three for me, one for him. That’s fine—I like her best anyway.
“It’s not that dirty,” Applejack says, but Rarity seems unconvinced.
“Perhaps. If I can vacuum first…” Rarity goes back and forth across the carpeted surface. She gives a satisfied nod and then hunkers down with Applejack. Her horn’s tall enough to stick up above the next step, though.
“You have to lay down.” Applejack has a touch of admonition in her voice, but her face is carefully controlled.
Rarity complies without a word—she just finished cleaning it, after all. Meanwhile, Twilight has another important observation: “I see somepony with orange and… yellow and red and green and blue and purple hair!” Given that two ponies have just emerged from my office and the incredibly specific color scheme, I figure he'll put two and two together.
“You're just looking at the TV, Twilight!” Applejack replies.
“No, I’m looking in the office again, and I see red and green and blue and purple and orange and yellow hair!” Twilight can imagine Applejack scratching her head, so she adds, “Who might have hair that color?”
Applejack just makes the same assumption about the TV. But Twilight can fly, so she leaves her sentry post to flit into the office. “Look!” she cries. “I found what I saw in there. It’s Rainbow Dash!”
My son gapes at her for a minute, a big smile on his face. “She has a big head,” he remarks. Yes, proportionately so, I guess she does more than the other toys. He’s right in another sense, of course, but I won’t press the point.
He gives her a big hug, and no longer will he take charge of Applejack only. Back to a more even split: me with three ponies, him with two. Now I worry that Dash will take Applejack’s place as favorite. But Twilight spots Mysterious Jack, so off we go running around the downstairs again, and we still have a little trouble catching him, despite Rainbow’s ability to go “superfast,” which my son gleefully demonstrates.
Almost bedtime though, one of the few days that I get him ready. He doesn’t mind my doing so, but only because Mommy isn’t here to do it. When I come back downstairs, I pick up the ponies off the stairs and put them on the side table next to my chair. The Applejack I’d returned to the office, too, more because I like having her there, and now there won’t be any questions about her.
When my wife gets home, it takes her a minute or so to see the new arrivals out. I’d shown them to her before, so it doesn’t exactly surprise her. “Oh, you gave them to him tonight?” she asks.
“Yeah. He didn’t think much of the new Applejack, though.”
“Because she doesn’t have a hat?”
“No, because he already had one. Seemed like there was a little more to it, but I couldn’t figure out why. He wouldn't let me put her on his dresser either.”
She nods. “I’m not surprised he wouldn’t let you.”
Maybe he’ll get used to her. The next day, my wife takes him to visit her parents again. She makes the trip every couple of months, and I used to go as well, but my work schedule has gotten less flexible, and having a young child restricts what times of day we can reasonably travel. Getting there close to midnight wouldn’t have caused a problem years ago, but now, we can’t have him keyed up that late.
That morning, my wife calls me at work to say they’re heading out. He wanted to take the new ponies with him. I ask her to make sure he doesn’t leave them on the floor, or their dog might chew on them. I get home from work and expect to find the new Applejack still on the table, but he’s taken her, too, along with Rarity and Rainbow Dash.
That leaves his old Applejack, Pinkie and Twilight to keep me company. And as I always do when they’re away, I get out my other ones: Funrise plushies of Rarity, Octavia, and Applejack, sans hat; the Funko Derpy figurine; a four-inch brushable Rarity; and a custom figurine of one of my OCs GaPJaxie commissioned for me to thank me for line-by-line editing all of “Siren Song” for him. My son’s Twilight, Pinkie, and behatted Applejack join the crowd overseeing my writing and reviewing activities for the week. I even wear my Derpy shirt on Saturday.
Our games continue with “other Applejack” now accepted into the herd (actually, a group of ponies is a string). I have to use her, too, so we’re back to an imbalance: four ponies for me, two for him. He says he can’t carry more than two, but when we have to put his toys away for bedtime, he doesn’t have any trouble with all six.
Before long, the routine changes again. Rather than chasing apple thieves, we more often tiptoe around to sneak past Discord. I remind my son that Discord’s a friend now, but he just shrugs off prior canon. I suppose he could have written “Bats!”
We creep away from the staircase, but as Rarity crosses from the hardwood to the carpet, she steps in the cold water of the pond there. “Aaaa!” she shrieks. “That’s freezing!”
Applejack laughs, but then immediately shouts, “You woke Discord up!” And so we all retreat to the stairs. Luckily enough, Discord falls back asleep. On the next pass, Applejack becomes the pond’s next victim. One could find it surprising that she’d fall prey to the same trap, and on her own farm, no less, but repetition has never deterred the mind of a four-year-old.
Pinkie can’t hold in a burp on one try, and Twilight runs into a low-hanging branch, but the one that proves most popular is Pinkie being unable to stifle a sneeze. Applejack tries to help, but no matter how much the tingle in Pinkie’s nose seems to abate, it always returns with a vengeance at the most inconvenient moment. And even Applejack soon succumbs to her allergies, infirmity, or whatever. Time after time.
Before long, Discord has moved on somewhere else. We don’t encounter him much anymore. Past the farm, we go straight on to the kitchen, and the ponies take their places on the large bamboo cutting board. If anything else sits there, Twilight has to levitate it out of the way first, because we can’t have anything that doesn't fit the routine.
Pinkie stands at the front, and my son tells her what we’ll cook and whether we’re helping, or if only the ponies will participate. Vanilla or chocolate cake and donuts come up most often, but we’ve also made sugar cookies, cupcakes, apple pie, and a batch of orange-cranberry iced tea.
“Rainbow Dash,” Pinkie says, “can you fly up and get me the vanilla out of the cabinet?” Dash usually gets to retrieve the high-up things. She finds that the most fun, though Pinkie can convince her to do other things by appealing to her ego.
“But anypony can get the eggs,” Dash complained once when asked. “I want to do something where I have to fly.”
“Only you can swoop down quick enough to gather eggs before the hens get upset,” Pinkie wheedled. Of course, Dash bragged that this was indeed the case and demonstrated. She still sports her tag, probably because she arrived at the same time as the Beanie Babies. It’s never occurred to my son to question hers.
But on this occasion, she comes back from a high cabinet with the vanilla. “Applejack,” Pinkie says, "can you get the milk?"
She trots over to the refrigerator and presses her nose to the handle. Really, it takes no more than that. The milk materializes on her back, because friendship is magic. She can also get things off the shelves, since her strong legs enable her to jump up high, but Pinkie usually has to remind her of that.
Twilight’s turn is next. “Can you bring me the flour?” she asks. Just a short flight away, right behind the cutting board, sits the flour bin. And the sugar, too, when other Applejack is asked.
Rarity usually gets the clean water from the sink, though Applejack may exhort her on the return trip to walk through the mud. “C’mon,” Applejack says. “It won’t hurt you to get a little on your hooves.”
“But I have this beautiful white coat,” Rarity answers, turning her nose up. “If I got mud on it, it would completely change the color. Besides, I can't get any mud on the fine clothes I wear.”
No argument from Applejack. She must sense the futility of pushing it any further.
Once in a while, since we started the baking spiel, he plays Pinkie for a minute or so. Not long enough to upset the order of things, but if pressed now, he'll usually name Pinkie as his favorite.
If the humans are participating, we’ll add a couple of ingredients. Maybe some salt or a trip to cut firewood for the oven. Whoever has to get eggs, if it’s not Rainbow Dash, needs to cluck like a chicken around back of the kitchen island to fool the hens. They never catch on.
Next step: mixing. Pinkie gyrates around to stir everything together, going faster and faster until she gets so unbalanced that she pops up on top of the microwave. “Whoa, I'm dizzy!” she says as she teeters on the edge, a good three feet above the stove.
“Don't look down!” Dash yells.
Of course, Pinkie does. She yelps and hops back from the edge again, then does the Looney Tunes move where she walks a few steps out into the air before realizing there’s no ground anymore, and she leaps back. Her dizziness still clearly affects her capacity for rational thought, since she repeats both of these multiple times, all to the laughter of Applejack and Dash.
But Rainbow soon regains her senses. “Pinkie!” she shouts. “Jump down! I'll catch you!” She even thinks to bring over a pillow from the couch.
Pinkie might hop down to the handle first or simply take a flying leap, but Rainbow reliably waits below to deliver her to safety. “Don't worry. I’ll always be there to catch you,” Rainbow adds tonight. Now we’re ready to bake. Usually.
Once in a while, we have to add one more ingredient: a bug to trick Discord. When he eats those cakes, we run away and laugh. I wonder what Fluttershy would think. My wife did buy him a brushable Fluttershy, but she’s up in the stash of presents for whatever occasions come up.
But today, it’s a normal cake. Pinkie puts it in the oven. “Nothing left to do but wait for it to cook!” she announces.
Now it’s time to run. Just like when we used to chase one of the Mysterious ponies around, but none of our own ponies come along for the ride. We just run for no reason while the ponies watch.
Until the random path goes upstairs. I run into my darkened bedroom and duck down on the far side of the bed. The window there overlooks the swingset, which has a small building on one end. We wave to it—that’s Fluttershy’s house.
“What monster are we going to fight today?” my son would have asked before we even started running, at least since we added this part to our repertoire.
I’ll try to pick one we haven’t used in a while or one from whatever episodes he saw most recently. But he clearly prefers the chimera from “Somepony To Watch Over Me.” If he doesn’t remember which one I’ve suggested, we make a stop at the computer, and I bring up a picture. At first, he notices one of the stock shots of all six main characters. “It would be cool if I had Fluttershy, too,” he says. In time, little guy.
I add “Ahuizotl” as a search term. “Remember this one? It’s the monster Daring Do fights.”
He points out the one picture in the Google images search that stands out as unlike the others. “Why does he look different here?”
“Someone else drew that. It’s not from the show, but it’s still Ahuizotl.” On our subsequent mad dash by the train table, I notice his plastic pith helmet, and inspiration strikes. “Why don't you put that on? You know who wears one like that?”
“Daring Do!” he shouts and immediately grabs it.
“Let’s show Rainbow Dash. She’d think it’s cool.” And she does. She gushes about how she loves Daring Do’s books, and Twilight is likewise impressed. But the hat’s a little big on him, and ungainly to run in, so we put it back on our next trip.
But for many of the monsters, from our vantage point in the bedroom, we simply wave Fluttershy over to us. “Can you use your Stare on it?” he’ll often ask her, but she can’t help with the chimera, so we instead whisper for her to stay safe in her home.
Monsters lurk in the bathroom, on the other side of the bed, but they don’t seem to bother my wife when she gets up at night to use it. We have to run past there to get back out into the hall, so we need some other way of distracting the chimera. In a stroke of good fortune, my son has remembered to bring a flute, a lion tamer’s chair, and some goat food.
Most times, we use all three to distract the beast, then slip past it. But one time, I instead get the idea to toss my son on the bed and high-tail it out of there myself. “Why did you use me as bait!?” he yells as he tears down the stairs after me.
He’s quite the talker and has a great vocabulary for his age, but I’m still surprised that he knows that concept. I’ve never heard him say it before. I look back to see if he’s laughing or if I’m about to get tattled on again, but he’s wearing a smile. “I thought you’d be fast enough to get away,” I respond, and he agrees.
So we run back to the kitchen, making sure to take a leap over the creek right at the end of our journey. Pinkie looks in the oven. “Sorry! Still needs to cook a little longer.”
Back upstairs then, despite the danger. One might wonder if we’ll ever learn our lesson. This time, I’ll let him make me the bait. And I’ll run down the stairs complaining how the tiger bit off my fingers. I’ll show him my hand to prove it, and he runs away from the fingerless monster a little before we go back to the kitchen.
“Cake’s ready!” Pinkie says when asked about it. Too hot for her to touch, though, oversized as it is. “Would you levitate it out, please, Twilight?”
And Twilight does. “Dig in, everypony!”
Each downs her piece with a single bite: “Aaaaaagm!”
All except for Rarity, who daintily eats hers with a “nibble, nibble” or “nom nom nom.” Sensing an opportunity, one of the others might dart in and eat it before she can finish, but my son offers her some cookies or a muffin to make up for it. “Thank you,” she says with an indignant glance toward whoever has been so inconsiderate today.
If the orders for the day called for ponies only with the baking, I tell my son that we don’t get a piece of the cake. If we didn’t help, we don’t get any. Most of the time, this passes without incident, but tonight, he complains. I don’t budge. It’s an important lesson to learn. “We can have some of the next one,” I tell him, and there will be a next one—we typically go through three or four of these cycles a night.
But then it’s eight o’clock and time for a bath before going to sleep. “The ponies need to go back to the farm now,” he declares as he grabs at least his two usuals. If I’m not right there beside him, he’ll also load up the other four that he swears he can’t carry. And back onto the coffee table they all go.
Recently, when Mommy was at her game night again, I put him to bed, and for his story time, he wanted me to tell him the plots of “Just for Sidekicks” and “Magical Mystery Cure,” which he’d seen earlier that day. I ham them up appropriately, and he enjoys them just as much as one of his books.
But tonight’s a normal night, and he prefers Mommy for bath time, so I stay downstairs. Halfway up, he presses his face to the gap in the railing. “Thank you for getting me those ponies,” he says. “I love them.”
“Sure. Good night.”
“I love you, Daddy.”
For whatever reason, I’ve never felt comfortable saying such things, but sometimes they just need to be said. “I love you, too.” Then I hear the thump-thump of little feet up the stairs and into his tub.
