Special Delivery

It's not as if I've talked Sydney into whitewashing a fence...

But maybe, just maybe, I've sort of dropped a few hints, which my four-year-old seems to have interpreted as a challenge. "Sydney, do you think you're big enough yet to get the newspaper all by yourself?"

"I am! I am!"

And that's how easy it is to get out of the daily morning trek to the end of the driveway to get the newspaper.

"Sydney, do you want to get the newspaper today?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah!"

I almost blew it this morning. She's been retrieving the paper all week and so I decided to mention it here, which means I needed to get a picture.

"Don't take my picture outside!"

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" (Don't make the newspaper getter angry!) "Can I take your picture inside? Say 'special delivery!'"

Earlier this week I briefly wondered if I should feel guilty about playing on my daughter's desire to prove her big girl status. Okay, not really. But I posted the question on my Facebook page and the overwhelming response was that this is perfectly fine, as long as the object she's retrieving is the newspaper. Paraphrasing some of my favorite answers... had I been asking her to retrieve a duck or a beer, then it'd probably be wrong. But a newspaper is perfectly acceptable.

Way to go, my big girl!