The Tables Have Turned

There's a common theme running through our little family: For Biscuit it's shiny objects and chores, for Hubby it's the A/C constantly running, for Katie it's the ball or frisbee getting stuck under the sofa or thrown over the fence, for Pipsi it's, sadly, her sister pulling objects out of her hands (or mouth), and for Pooki, it's The Table.

The Table is cute. It sings, counts, plays music and lights up the Beans' dreary days in the Playground. It also thwarts Pooki on an infuriatingly regular basis. Toys, Binkies and bibs somehow find their way under The Table and when Pooki's big blue eyes spy them, she can't resist their lure. So she goes after them.

And gets stuck. She gets her little Bean head, shoulders and arms smack in the center beneath it and then, elbows sticking out between two of The Table's legs, she begins to wail. She can't go forward, she can't go backward, and I imagine she thinks she's going to die there, like I did when I was five and locked myself in one of my brother's rabbit cages in the backyard (I was very small for my age, although I don't recall that I was bunny-sized... but then again I also remember that it was pretty cramped in said cage for what felt like hours but Mimzi swears was no more than fifteen minutes). ANYWAY, most of these moments are short- lived but Pooki seems entirely willing to hold a grudge against The Table, refusing to go back and play with it for at least a few minutes unless Pipsi immediately goes to play with it.

Really quickly, there's something you need to know about Pooki and her ability to vocalize. I'm about to date myself, but I remember the first time I heard a Mariah Carey song. I was on my way home from school and I think I was a junior in high school and I was truly amazed at this woman's awesome range. I think I heard sometime that she covers eight octaves or somewhere in there. Pooki covers at least that much, but it'll probably never be accurately measured because I'm pretty convinced that her range goes beyond the ability of human hearing because there are moments when she stares right at me with her mouth open and no sound comes out, thus leading me to believe that either she's making noise I can't hear or practicing her Jedi mind-control tricks on me. Why do you need to know this? You need to know this because this morning, I emerged from forty-five seconds in the powder room to hear Pooki's Laugh of Triumph. Pooki's Laugh of Triumph is very distinctive. It's deep, throaty and just plain devious. It says, "I just totally got you and there's nothing you can do about it!" and the moments I am most likely to hear this laugh is when Pooki has just popped a Binkie from Pipsi's mouth and stuck it into her own. Then we hear the Laugh of Triumph.

What was odd about this Laugh of Triumph was that I heard Pipsi's This Amuses Me Laugh along with it. Pipsi's This Amuses Me Laugh is pretty self-explanatory. She first used this laugh when Biscuit made funny faces at me while I was holding her. She was about four months old and it was very cute. Anyway, these events stirred my curiosity because I wondered what Pooki was getting into if not her sister's face. So I peeked around the corner and found this:

It seemed that Pooki found a way to turn the tables on The Table; instead of being at the mercy of The Table, she was now the one doing the dominating and it suited her very well, thank you very much, take THAT, you mean old Table you! That's what you GET for THWARTING me all those times!!! And so it followed that Pipsi, who must have found inspiration in Pooki's bold assertion of her physical dominance over The Table, finally got herself onto the Car for the first time. And was she ever proud of herself!

Now the tables have, quite literally, turned. My little Beans are no longer mastered by their toys but rather, they have become the Toy Masters. And, as I've sat here, right next to the Playground chronicling their triumphs, the Beans have climbed onto the toys that are up against the sides of their plastic prison, and I know the days of their unwilling containment are numbered, and this has me worried. Why? Because now that they've triumphed over one nemesis it's only a matter of time before they feel invincible enough to take on the greatest nemesis of all: the Mommynator. And when it's two against one, what hope do I have?!?!