Baking is not my thing, and apparently it's not Aryana's thing either. After we throw away a fresh batch of homemade cookies burnt to an indescribable color, I dust off the last bits of flour from the front of my clothes. I don't want to know what the back of my clothes look like.
"There's flour in my hair!" Aryana squeals with delight and shakes her head like a wet dog.
"We are never doing this again. There is nothing wrong with Chips Ahoy or Oreos. Who needs to bake, right?"
"Right!" Aryana shouts and lifts her chin high in the air and then back down, in an exaggerated nod.
"Who are the worst bakers in the whole wide world?" I cheer with my right hand raised high in the air.
"We are!" Aryana shouts and slaps my high five. Flour floats all around us. "Can we do this again tomorrow?" she asks and I roll my eyes with disbelief.
"How about we just go shopping after work tomorrow? We can go to the new Walmart Megastore out in Valley Stream. I hear they have a huge outdoor patio section with lots of swings and slides to try out."
"Yay!" Aryana shouts and bounces up and down all the way to the bathroom humming a made-up tune of how we're going to swing, swing, swing to Walmart Megastore, aha, swing, swing, swing!
After spending a good ten minutes washing the goo out of Aryana's hair, I head to the bathroom for my own long, hot bath. I pull out all eight bathtub toys and tuck them into a blue fishnet sack that's hung up on the wall via suction cups. I turn on the radio and fill the tub with water and my daughter's bubble-gum scented bubble bath. I ran out of my lavender scented bath, but right now any bubble bath will do.
Aryana sneaks into the bathroom before I undress and asks me the weirdest question.
"What goes pop?" she says with a giggle.
"I don't know, what goes pop?"
She giggles some more before answering, "A weasel. Get it? A weasel goes pop. Pop goes the weasel."
Maybe it's because she's my daughter, but I believe Aryana has the most infectious laughter I've ever heard.
"You know what else goes pop?" Aryana asks while suppressing her giggles. She runs out of the bathroom and returns with my phone in her hand. "Listen."
We listen to the bubbles erupting quietly in the tub, the CD player playing Smells Like Teen Spirit from Nirvana, and the time creeping by. Aryana rubs her eyes and looks up at me with her right index finger pointed up in the air, signaling me to wait just a bit more. I sigh heavily and look in the mirror to inspect my hair for any grays. None found.
The phone pops, just like Aryana said it would. "See. It pops," she squeals. I roll my eyes at her silliness. "What? It popped!" Aryana says with her shoulders raised and her palms facing the ceiling.
"It's time to go to sleep. You have school tomorrow."
I take the phone from her and walk her to her bedroom. Disney princess dolls are scattered about her pink and brown polka-dot area rug. Apparently there was a royal ball earlier in the afternoon before our baking experiment.
After cleaning up her toys so that neither she nor I accidentally step on any of the dolls, or worse, their hard-plastic accessories, I finally get Aryana into bed. I pull up the fleece Disney princess blanket over her tiny body, tucking her into a large burrito form, and kiss her on her forehead. Her yawn is so big I pretend to see the contents of her stomach.
"You can't see my cheeseburger!" Aryana shrieks and opens her mouth wide again.
"Oh yes I can. There it is!" I respond while pointing at her tongue, threatening to poke her tonsils. She snaps her teeth at my finger with munching sound effects.
YOU ARE READING
A Selfish Moment
RomanceJubilee Ray wakes up Saturday morning in a strange bed with a handsome guy asleep at her side and no memory of how she got there. Everett Salerno wakes up ecstatic about the incredible night he spent with Jubilee. She can't wait to get out of his ap...
