Last night, in an effort to convince us to play a game with her, Chloe righteously exclaimed, “I can’t believe you don’t want to play with me.  You both should be happy I want to hang out with you.  My friends don’t ever want to hang out with their parents.  You need to take advantage of this while you can, because when I’m 14 I won’t want to be seen with you.”

Wow.  Talk about a guilt trip.  I usually feel like we make pretty great parents.  We’re far from perfect – we should cook more, we should speak more French with the girls and we sometimes lack patience.  But all in all, I think we’ve done pretty well with Chloe and Sophie.

Apparently, however, we haven’t done enough.  Still feeling some residual guilt this morning, Chloe easily convinced us to play Monopoly.  The game started out ok.  But the girls bickered, I was distracted by a little annoyance at work and then Sophie got some bad news (a cancelled sleepover, which is very bad news for a 6-year old) that caused tears.

Nevertheless, Chloe continued to have a nice day with her Papa while Sophie and I went to the city to see   a show.  Chloe’s even convinced him to play tennis with her tomorrow.  This wouldn’t be particularly remarkable, but for the fact that my husband hasn’t played tennis since March 2000 when, while on vacation in Jamaica, he threw out his back playing a game with me.  Chloe, your guilt trip has been a smashing success.  Just promise to be gentle with your dad on the court.