Learning new tricks

Kiddos, you are not gonna believe what Elle did to me yesterday. I would have told you then, but when I sat down I realized I never published the end-of-medical-training post, so I had to put it up and save this one for today.

Background: When Ellison gets her little paws on something forbidden, I have multiple strategies for removing it from her possession. Some involve tears, some don't. My preferred method is to offer her another equally or more desirable object (remember the eye of the beholder concept - to appeal to her the object can be anything from a scrap of paper to a single Cheerio). She is then (usually) willing to abdicate her claim to the first object in order to receive the second. In layman's terms, we trade.

The actual story: Today I was holding a giant, red, stuffed elephant (long-ago baby gift she's finally old enough to enjoy), talking in a silly voice and making it tickle her. She then ran to her toy pile (let's be honest, it's not a toy box anymore when the stuff overflows into a big heap around it), and grabbed her baby doll. She then held her doll out to me, which I graciously accepted with exclamations of what good hugs baby doll gives. My little booger of a child then plucked the giant elephant from my lap and darted off, throwing a devilish look over her shoulder.

Clever girl.