“I take a long time to do nothing.”

My daughter does not move. There are times when I fully believe my wife gave birth to a statue. Yes, she is the baby and has readily learned that she can probably out-wait us all. We are chasing our wayward son, we are serving our high stakes and specific daughter, so she can just lurk in the shadows and voila! Stuff gets done for her. It works.

 

Part of the reason it works is because her sister was born to be in the service industry. She will do whatever is required to help. Her baby sister could just wake up and not move for 24 hours and our daughter would somehow get her sister to school dressed, showered, fed, and possibly vaccinated without our help as parents.

 

Nevertheless, our youngest games the system, even her older sister. She moves like frozen molasses that is going uphill so you can either oblige her or be six hours late to wherever you are going.

 

I know that part of the reason is she is flat-out tired. She tries to keep up with her siblings who run buck wild every chance they get. So she tries to stay up later, tries to skip to their beat. No chance. She does generally keep up good spirits. Instead of melting down, tantruming her way to express delirium, she just wanders around in a total fog.

 

If she is twirling her hair while not understanding anything you are saying, that tips you off that she is done with being awake. Unfortunately, this also indicates she should have been in bed at 3:30pm. Something unachievable with two siblings in school.

 

On many days, I drop her off at pre-school which starts at 9am. The other day, we were all up early, the older two were out the door and it was still only 8:20am. I had a solid 25 minutes to leave and be on time. She was dressed and needed only to be winterized. At that moment, she twirls her hair en route to a knot that only a circular saw could remove. It must have teleported me into another time dimension because I just kept thinking, it must be at least 11:30pm by now. All I could remember is looking for gloves, a hat, and her jacket, and walking around the kitchen and hanging hook area to find it, then repeating this effort as I felt my beard grow. I made no progress, I dreamt I was in quicksand, the sun was descending. A comet was hurtling towards Earth.

 

Eventually, I got her in the car after her twelve minute walk on the snow to a vehicle 19 feet from the back door. Literally, when I put the key in the ignition, I was convinced we were so late that it would be pickup time by the time I arrived after the 7 minute drive. Then, the car clock lit up and it was 8:36am. Only sixteen minutes after I became alone with her after her siblings left for school. She literally never moved from one spot on the floor, twirled her hair and sucked time out of the time-space continuum. I literally aged 5 years in sixteen minutes and she may have halved her age.

 

Such is the life with our baby girl. She is not going anywhere quickly. She knows that would force her to actually do things like put on her clothes or shoes, things she does capably at school. But why do it when someone will do it for you, and if she waits long enough, time pressure alone will force her parents or sister to step in and take over.

 

Even so, we are on to her. We just can’t always stop her game for practical reasons, but I am hoping her snail’s pace just means she is in total control of life as opposed to it going by her in a blur.

 

- Doug Glanville