the pity button

Due to my work schedule and my school schedule I often miss a lot of the moments that Ada and Elliot share together. They have an amazing bond and every little girl should be so lucky to have a Dad as cool and caring as Elliot.

I often get stories about the games they play together or I'll hear the loud explosions of laughter coming from the living room while I'm on a conference call back in the office. But rarely do I get to witness the joy first hand. Since I'm off from school and had a rare non-working night last night, I got to witness the Ada and Elliot play time live and in living color while I mixed together some banana bread.

Elliot and Ada were both pretending to be frogs, well more specifically Elliot was a toad and Ada a beautiful purple frog. Elliot's toad was first trying to catch Ada's frog. This in itself was pretty funny as Elliot would say "I'm going to push my fast button" and Ada would immediately retort (with peals of laughter) "I pushed my faster button" followed by Elliot countering until he got all the way to his "ridiculously fast button" and the whole house (myself included) erupted into side aching laughter. At some point the frog and the toad joined forces as Ada mistakenly hit the "Alien button". As they tried to escape those pesky aliens Ada found more and more interesting buttons to push.

Ada: "I pushed the head button, we are just heads"

Elliot: "How can we push a different button, we are only heads"

Me (from the kitchen): "Noses!"

Ada: giggling "I pushed the leg button with my nose"

Elliot: "How can we push a different button, we are only legs"

This went on and on, with Ada pushing different buttons and Elliot perfectly interpreting the situation and setting up the next play.

Most of these moves were fairly straight forward - there was a circle button, a cube button, and then out of no where, a curve ball to end all curve balls, Ada exclaimed, "I pushed the pity button!"

I was a little lost at that point, what would Elliot do with that one? Most of his other solutions had something to do with new funny contortions of the body - how would he physically embody pity? Without missing a beat Elliot became very calm, sat up straight and leaned in with a look of genuine concern turned to the aliens and said, "Oh aliens, I'm so sorry, are you OK?"

Ada giggled, and moved on to the next button.