Chloë and the Missing Zebra

So for this one you have to know that Chloë owns the book Olivia and the Missing Toy, in which Olivia's favorite toy goes missing. After rummaging the house and terrorizing her brothers, she discovers (spoiler) that the dog took it and destroyed it. That night she goes to bed with a stack of cat books, sending a black look at the dog and saying, "Only books about cats tonight." She forgives the dog on the last page.

So. I went into a baking frenzy today for some reason, on top of doing most of the prep for dinner because Eric was working. My second batch of bread was proofing on the counter where a bunch of other little junk is. When the first batch was out, I scooped the peel under the second batch and put it in the oven. Not much later, I noticed a plasticky smell, and was a little concerned, but we just got a new dishwasher (hooray!) and figured it was probably something to do with that.

Then I checked on the bread, which was baking nicely, and noticed something sticking out from under it. It was Chloë's zebra, a laminated-cardboard-ornament thing she got from a birthday celebration at preschool. (I know, I still haven't written about preschool.) I hastily pulled it out and showed Chloë, apologizing. It was mostly intact, but a bit, uh, brown. She said, "It's okay Mommy. It's okay. It will turn white again in the night."

She wanted to examine it, so I let her have it as I proceeded with the third batch of bread and the tortillas.  Sometime later, I turned around to find that Chloë had gone off to do something else and Maia was dropping two halves of a paper zebra to the ground. "Maia! No! You tore Chloë's zebra!" I said, and showed it to Chloë, and tried to get Maia to say "Sorry," but she wouldn't.

Chloë looked solemnly at the two pieces of zebra. She looked up at me and said calmly, "Only books about big girls tonight."