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Mo wanted to go swimming, but she didn't want to listen to Daddy...

I told her to put her swimsuit on if she wanted to go swimming, something she'd been talking about all day.

She finally put it on, then took it off to go to the bathroom. Go figure, why you'd want to take a bikini top off to go to the bathroom. This is the kid who occasionally flushes her bra down the commode, so logic isn't necessarily part of the picture.

She sat on her bed, naked, with her swimsuit in her lap and a smile on her face.



"Put your swimsuit on or we can't go swimming," I said.

Nothing.

"Do you want to go swimming, yes or no?"

"YES!"

"Then put your flippin' suit on."

Nothing.



Em, meanwhile, is campaigning against going swimming, she wants me to stay home and make pizza. Which is fine with me, but I know Mo wants to hit the pool, and I'd kind of promised it earlier.

I made pizza dough, told Em it could rise while we were at the pool, went back and Mo still hadn't put on her suit.

"I'm going to wipe down the stove," I said. "When I'm done, if you're not in your suit, we aren't going swimming. It's your choice." I grabbed her head and made her look in my eyes as I said this.

When the stove was wiped, Mo was still sitting naked on the bed, grinning and talking in TeleTubby quotes.



Was she testing me? See if Dad, already in his suit with Sissy already in hers, would really scrub the mission just because Mo wasn't listening and doing what she was told to do?

Hard to say. This was a day measured in time-outs. For eating weather stripping, for escaping the house alone, for flushing bras.

The pizza was good, despite Mo's mourning of the trip to the pool. Her Mom was almost due to pick her up, so I wasn't just being a parent, I was literally out of time to jack with her not wanting to put her suit on.

The recipe, by the way, is basically the same as in pizzas past. The black olive was on a white crust with Alfredo sauce; the italian sausage was the Hot Italian Pork from Whole Paycheck Market, with some sun dried tomato pesto for the sauce.