she abides by the letter of the law, if not the spirit

I don't know if you remember the details of Elisabeth's favorite game, called Crazy Dog. Either Doug or I take a blanket and wave it like a toreador hollering "Go Crazy Dog, Go! Go!" and she runs across our room, out the door, down the hall, and back again. Then the toreador has to huddle under the blanket talking about how scared they are of the Crazy Dog and she comes and tackles us. Then does it again. As many times as you'll let her.

Doug has endless patience. He lets her do Crazy Dog any number of times. I have a rule of 3 for virtually everything. I will read a book 3 times, I will sing a song 3 times, I will play your silly game 3 times. 3 Crazy Dogs. That is my limit.

So this evening, Doug was downstairs preparing the fruit cup (Elisabeth gets a fruit cup snack before bed every night) and I was upstairs playing Crazy Dog with Elisabeth and Charlotte (Charlotte has to huddle under the blanket with me, although she thinks she can crawl very fast and attain Crazy Puppy status, but she cannot). I told Elisabeth that it was the third, and last, time. So off she went. She managed to round up Doug on her way back and instantly turned to him and said, "Can I do it again Daddy?" Little turkey. After Doug said yes, and I protested, we set her straight about the fact that there would be no more games of Crazy Dog.

"I want to play Hop Bunny Blanket." What in the world is "Hop Bunny Blanket" you might ask? Not knowing either, we let her start playing. "Here Daddy, take this blanket and holler "Hop Bunny! Hop!" And he did. And she hopped. She hopped across our room and out the door. And we quickly realized we'd been played like fiddles. She wasn't playing Crazy Dog. She was playing Hop Bunny Blanket. But she was also getting her way.

They are so literal, the little buggers.