Early Morning Wanderings

The other morning, I woke up to find Brynna missing from the bed.

I was post-call and tired, and she had arrived under the covers sometime after Alex had headed out for work. I had certainly not noticed her waking up and leaving the room.

So I dragged myself out of my warm cocoon and headed down the hall to her room, where I expected to find her playing or reading. Nope!

A bit more concerned, I headed down the stairs. I didn't see or hear her playing in the living room as I opened the door from the hallway, but as I came around the corner toward the kitchen, there she was.

Sitting on the kitchen floor.

Eating ice cream out of the carton!

Now, I have no idea how she knew that we HAD ice cream, or how to find it, or even why it occurred to her to look for it. But she had clearly been enjoying it for some time.

"Brynna," I said, "what are you doing?"

"I eating ice cream!" she answered brightly.

"Why?" I couldn't resist asking.

"Because I hungry."

"Why didn't you wake Mama up to make you breakfast?"

"I eat animal crackers and chocolate and ice cream." (In other words, 'because the foraging was way more fun than what you would have fed me, lady!')

Looking around the room, I realized that this was true. There was a bag that had contained animal crackers, now with only a few crumbs at the bottom. A piece of chocolate had been nibbled around the edges as if a small mouse had been raiding our kitchen. And a chair was dragged over to the counter near the utensils, which explained where she got the spoon that she was using to dig into the ice cream.

This early morning junkfood fest was, of course, its own reward, and it's something she keeps trying to replicate. Alex swears that a few days later, she came into our room briefly just to make sure he was still asleep before making a break for the freezer.

But why don't I let Brynna tell you all about it herself?



Transcript below, for those of you who aren't fluent in two-year-old:

"I stick my finger into the ice cream, then I swallow it, and then I eat some more. And then I eat some more, and then you come downstairs and close the ice cream top and put it into the freezer and then I have NO MORE ICE CREAM LEFT."

It's just about enough to drive me to drink. Or to my own carton of ice cream.