It Beats Resting

Meimei was up to her usual tricks tonight. As soon as we were comfortably settled in bed, she said, "Pee, pee."
I took her to the toilet. Nothing.
Back in bed, she said, "Mama, want dress." Lately she has been into wearing dresses to bed. With leggings. Sometimes she has more than one costume change, signaled with the command, "New dress"; later it's "new pants," and so on into the night. Since Daddy was working late and I was feeling less than perky, I said no. Meimei"s face crumpled as the wail rose. As she eyed me to gauge my reaction, she poked out her tongue to catch the cascading tears.
"Want dress NOW."
"Not tonight," I told her. Your sister needs to sleep. She has school in the morning, and you have gym class."
"Want DRESS!"
I tried to ignore the tears and tell the story. Meimei turned up her personal volume. She drowned me out. I knew she was manipulating me, but it still broke my heart to see her in tears.

"O.K., sweetie," I told her." What if I got you a dress."
The noise stopped. She thought.
"I be happy?"
"And then would you want something else?"
"Yes."
"What?"
"Blue pants."
"And after that?"
"I be happy?" She was smiling now.
"And then you would want what?"
"Snack!"
"And after the snack?"
She thought again.
"Brush teeth!" Now she was really enjoying the game.
"And what would you want after that?"
"Get Bipedal!" (Bipedal is a beanbag dog, companion to her favored stuffed dog, Blackear.
"And where would we go to get Bipedal?"
"Downstairs!"
"And then what would we do?"
"Watch 'Oobi'."
"We can do all those things, but we'll do them all at the same time, later, when I say so. Can you be patient and wait a little while?"
Her antics continued, but she waited. Soon Jiejie was asleep and Meimei and I headed to her room for the perfect dress, new undies and a little jacket with ballet shoes embroidered on it. Then down we went to find Bipedal, have a snack and watch the Radio City Music Hall "Christmas Spectacular."