Dolls Drink, Too

Shlomo knows how to open water bottles.  Thank G-d, this is not a skill that he has transferred to other screw-on caps yet, because we have empty sugar jars that hold: brown sugar, white sugar, barley, rice, flour, and cocoa.  I don’t even want to think what would happen if he unscrewed those.  No, I’m not going to think about it.  No.  I won’t.  I won’t.  No.  No.  No way.

Anyways, yesterday was a fast day.  Since I was fasting pretty well, I decided to do some shopping for Purim, instead of waiting until the last minute (Sunday) and doing it then.*  So I took a big water bottle, filled it up just more than halfway, and put together a bag of stuff to take with us.  Then I went to the bathroom, took a phone call from Yitzchak, and sat down to wait for my neighbor, Y., who we were going to go with.

While I was talking to Yitzchak, Shlomo took the water and started to drink.  Mind you, I am pro drinking water.  But Shlomo has started to dump the water and play with it, and I just didn’t have the energy.  So when I noticed that he wasn’t really drinking, I took the bottle away, cleaned him (and the mess) up, put the bottle in my backpack and zipped it up.

Guess what happened next?  Yeah, that’s right.

He unzipped the backpack, took out the water bottle, saw that his doll was also in the backpack (we were getting ready to go, remember?), and took her out, too.  Then he went back to drinking water, while I kept an eye on him from a distance.

When I turned around two minutes later, I saw a large puddle of water on the floor.  In fact, it looked like almost half a water bottle’s worth of water (if you remember, I filled the 1.5 liter bottle up just more than halfway).

“Shlo-mo!  Oh, no!  What are you doing?”

I visually follow the trail of water to its source, Shlomo, taking in the extent of the mess.  And then I see that he didn’t dump it.  Or, at least, he didn’t dump it for the sake of dumping it, or for the sake of playing with it.

“Yeah?  Yeah?  Mmmm?”  he asks.  As if to say, “She’s not drinking it, can you help me make her drink?”

Because he wasn’t dumping water.  He had laid his doll on the floor and was giving her water to drink.  And since it wasn’t working, he kept doing it.  When I came into the room, he asked for help.

Doll was dripping (or, as I said, peeing, and we all know that too much water makes you pee a lot), and Shlomo was soaking, right down to his shoes.

Doll didn’t come with us – she went in the dryer with the white load that was already there.  And Shlomo wore his too-small sandals for the trip (not uncomfortable, because they’re sandals, but it makes me feel bad).

But how can I be angry that he gave the doll a drink?

 

 

*Jerusalem celebrates Shushan Purim, which is a day later than the regular Purim.  Purim falls out on Sunday this year.  We lucky ducks celebrate on Monday.  Since [regular] Purim on Sunday means that the fast day before it would be Shabbat (Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath), it was pushed up to Thursday.  Everyone fasts the same day, regardless of which Purim is celebrated in their city.