story time

The fiance's niece is running around my place this week. She's three. She still doesn't say much, but manages to communicate to you by touching stuff.

It took her a few days to figure out how to climb on auntie's new taller bed. Now it's like an indoor slide for her. Climb up, slide down the side.

I only have a couple of children's books, so I read her this one. While we were watching "Fear Factor" on tv, she sat next to me on the sofa. I read her the first story about the first man and first woman. As the population grew, they dispersed. The people who went to live in the caves became the dark skinned peoples. Apparently, the white people are the ones who went out into the sea.

I finished the first story. Then she slapped her hand on the book again, so I read her the second story about the tortoise and the monkey sharing the banana tree. Apparently, the monkey was supposed to toss a bunch of bananas down to the tortoise, but didn't. So the tortoise tricked the monkey and made him fall onto some sharp bamboo killing him. The tortoise then took the monkey, diced him up and cooked him and fed him to the other monkeys. Pretty gruesome. We ended the story there because by the second paragraph the niece was fast asleep. I'll have to tell you about what happened to the tortoise later.

Sometimes, you think she's not paying attention to you at all, but she really is. They always are.