The best medicine

Many of you know that Maggie loves to play "Baby Games." Baby Games takes various forms; sometimes it involves she and a friend pretending to change each other's diapers (and in doing so, they frequently stretch realism to its limit, as when the mom came up to me at Pump It Up and informed me that my daughter was inside an inflatable bouncehouse, naked from the waist down, or when they cleaned out the napkin dispenser at an indoor playground because they needed "wipes"). Sometimes Baby Games involves Maggie being a baby, using a real paci, drinking from a pretend bottle (she'd love to pretend nurse, but I won't let her), being rocked like a real baby, and being placed in her "crib" -- usually the couch.

Sometimes Baby Games requires Maggie to be the mommy or the big sister with someone else playing the role of the baby. Tonight, in a wonderful turn of events, Maggie asked Daddy to clean up from dinner so that she and I could play Baby Games together. We took turns being the baby, and sometimes the grownup character was Mommy; other times it was the doctor giving shots.

I had fun behaving in all the unreasonable ways babies do. I'd spit out my paci and cry; Maggie would quickly retrieve it for me, only to have me spit it out again immediately. I'd turn my head from side to side, refusing to let her "feed" me my bottle, and I'd cry. Oh, did I cry. I carried on and on so long and so loudly that she was frantically looking for the paci, and when she finally found it, she crammed it in my mouth with an expression on her face that seemed to say only one thing:

Dear God, please make it stop.

At this, I got completely cracked up. I'm sure the humor will be lost here, since trying to explain a moment like this in writing just isn't the same, but if you could have seen the look on Maggie's face ... It was like looking into the face of an overtired, stressed-out, frustrated 30-something mom when all she wants is for the baby to just. shut. up. already. (Sound like anyone you know?)

I started laughing. The laughter grew. And grew. And grew. When the paci fell out of my mouth, Maggie tried covering my mouth with her hands to make me stop. This made me laugh even harder. (A few of you who know me really well know that once I get going, it gets a whole lot worse before it gets better.) I could not stop laughing, and all the while Maggie was trying to force me (playfully) to stop, trying to cover my mouth with her little hands, to no avail. We collapsed into laughter together, she half on me, I half on her, the two of us slowly becoming a single heap of giggles, guffaws, and flailing limbs.

It's been a long time since I've laughed so hard I cried, and it felt good. That I experienced it with and because of my precious daughter made it all the better.