GRACIE’S TO –DO LIST
- Feed Gracie.
- Wash Gracie's face.
- Play with Gracie. Her favorite is the little bus driver so make sure he doesn't get lost.
- Help Gracie put her toys away.
- Put on Gracie's pajamas and brush her teeth.
- Read Gracie a bedtime story and kiss her goodnight.
Easy peasy, Charlie thinks as his mom whooshes out the door leaving him in charge of his two-year-old sister for the first time ever.
“How hard can it be to watch a baby for a couple hours?” he says as he reads the to-do list. “Piece of cake and fifteen bucks to boot.”
Gracie giggles.
“Time for supper.” He puts her in the highchair and tries to shovel the ground up carrots, kale and Lima beans into her mouth.
“Yukky!” The grey-green mush ends up smeared on her cheek.
“What’s the matter?”
“Yukky,” Gracie says again.
He takes a sniff then tastes the bit clinging to the spoon. “That definitely is yukky!”
Gracie scrunches up her nose and giggles.
“But Mom said you are supposed to eat this for supper.” Charlie scoops out another spoonful and tries a different tack.
“Zoom, zoom. Here comes the airplane!”
“Vroom, vroom, a race car!”
“Neigh, neigh, a horsey!”
Gracie giggles but keeps her mouth shut tight.
“You have to eat something,” Charlie says.
Gracie points to the Mickey Mouse cookie jar on the counter, which only ever contains chocolate fudge brownies.
“You can’t eat brownies for supper.”
Gracie’s lower lip trembles, her eyes well up, and a sound like a siren and a foghorn combined bursts out of her mouth. Charlie covers his ears but the piercing sound slithers through the cracks between his fingers and pummels his eardrums.
He stumbles to the counter and grabs a handful of brownies out of the jar. “Here, here!” he cries as he throws them at his bellowing sister. She stops instantly and flashes her brother a beaming smile.
“Don’t ever do that again.” Charlie rubs his ears trying to stop them from ringing.
She giggles as crumbs tumble out of her mouth. The brownies disappear in a flash.
“What am I going to do with your supper?” he says. “Mom will not be happy I fed you brownies instead.”
Gracie giggles and points to him. He squeezes his eyes shut as he shovels the gruesome concoction into his mouth. “You owe me big time, baby sister.”
He has her out of the high chair before he remembers he was supposed to wash her face, which is covered in wet brownie particles. He gets a damp washcloth then spends the next twenty minutes chasing her all over the house.
“No, no, no!” she screams in a pig-squealing, one-hundred-decibel screech.
He finally plops on the sofa, the washcloth abandoned on the floor as he once again rubs his throbbing ears.
Gracie pulls at his hand. “Play wif me, Chaw-wee.”
He sighs as he slides to the floor. She is rolling her school bus back and forth on the carpet. “This shouldn’t be too hard.”
“Waaaaaa!” Gracie’s screams ricochet through the room and bounce around Charlie’s head.
“What happened now?”
“Bus dwiber gone!”
Charlies spends the next half hour crawling from room to room as Gracie wails. He is about to give up and start crying himself when he spots the AWOL toy jammed into the sofa cushions.
The next hour drags by in a painful, slow-motion blur as Charlies tries to get Gracie to clean up, put on her pajamas and go to bed. The tooth brushing fiasco will forever be branded in his brain as the worst experience of his life.
“Oh my,” says their mom when she finally comes home.
Charlie is sleeping in the middle of the living room. Brownie bits cover him from head to toe.
“Hi, Mommy,” says Gracie. “Brownies all gone . . .”