The running game

Ever since Solanne could interact with anyone, I have always thought, Gee, how it must suck to be the little sister. You know, the little sister always has to do what the big sister says — at best, the little sister can say no, but she will fear retribution because the big sister will then just ignore her. The big sister gets to make up the games; the little sister usually follows and never gets to make any of it up. The big sister usually gets first pick because she's on the ball; the little sister gets seconds. The big sister decides when it's time to be done a game; the little sister just has to live with the fact that it's done.

In our house, there is one particular game that gets played a lot. Maïa invented it and she calls it the Running Game. Here's some background to the game:

Maïa is partial to Cinderella. Okay, she's obsessed. She has read the Disney version that used to be mine and seen the Disney movie. She knows the differences between the two (turns out, in one version, the prince picks up the slipper and in another, it's the grand duke). She loves to wear any dress that falls below her knees, and it's a special bonus if it's actually blue, because it reminds her of Cinderella's ballgown. She falls into some sort of religious ecstasy when we read the book and turn to the page where the fairy-godmother transforms Cinderella's dress into a gown.

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Sidebar: Derek and I were quite diligent in keeping our home princess-free. We never watched the Disney movies or talked about princesses etc, all for reasons too complicated to discuss here. Anyhow, after less than a month in daycare, when she had just turned three, the princesses came into our lives for good (and evil?).

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We have dress-up clothes (none of that overpriced-Disney-fall-apart-after-three-uses stuff; real cast-offs from long ago). There is one yellow mini dress that my mother used to wear some time in the seventies that now makes a lovely ball gown for a preschooler. Maïa loves it, and she calls it her Cinderella dress. And she has these pink corduroy slippers that she has always called her glass slippers. Of course, they get paired with the yellow dress (which is, by the way, according to Maïa, a blue dress).

Maïa is the princess, and Solanne is the prince. Whether or not she actually knows this is still a mystery to us, but she wants to play with Maïa, so she follows the instructions as best she can. Solanne doesn't require a costume for this game, but Maïa usually vocalises the fact that Solanne is wearing a suit. Anyhow, over the course of a morning a few weeks ago, Maïa developed this very sophisticated scenario. It begins in the kitchen, which is at the back of the house. She starts to run toward the front of the house (there is a long hallway that goes from front to back, and it's over 50 feet long). Before she's out of the kitchen, she loses one of her slippers. She does this without slowing down; it's an incredibly complicated move that she has perfected. Solanne is then instructed to "Get the slipper!" Solanne swoops in and grabs the slipper as Maïa makes her escape to the office (at the front of the house). Solanne is expected to follow and then place the slipper on Maïa's foot. Then they run back to the kitchen and start over again.

Maïa never tires of the game, and at first, neither did Solanne. But she's starting to tell Maïa that she's tired of the game, or, gasp, doesn't even want to play in the first place. And then I see that it's not so easy being the big sister. You design these intricate and amazingly fun games to play with your little sister, and she just ditches you so she can play peek out of the livingroom closet. Who wants to play those baby games when you can have magic and royalty?