Alright, Thanksgiving was a while ago, but I haven't gotten around to writing about it. At the last minute, well, a week before last minute, I decided to take my sister up on her offer to go down to Knoxville for Thanksgiving.
Melanie picked me up at the airport with her two daughters. Veronica was being rather standoffish as usual, but Heidi didn't seem to mind it when I carried her. On the drive back from the airport, I learned the Veronica loves "Veronica" by Elvis Costello. I'd hear from the backseat "Veronica song on" over and over until my sister would flip back to it. Also, while my niece might greet my "Hellos" with "No", she would take french fries from me. Speaking of food, I also learned my niece is just as fond of peanut-butter as I am.
Thanksgiving day we went to the home of some of Melanie's friends from church. Melanie and I had picked up a turkey and the plan was to fry it when we got there. Meanwhile, a second turkey was getting smoked. The frying turned out to be a non-starter. The first tank of propane emptied before the oil got hot. We got a second tank, and tried again, but the burner wasn't going full blast like it should. After half an hour or more, the oil was barely over 100 degrees. Eventually we gave up and decided to smoke the second turkey as well, but not until after we had the first one.
It ended up being a late lunch timewise, but delicious. I really enjoyed the smoked turkey, but was sad that I didn't get to try the fried turkey, since I've heard it's delicious.
While Thanksgiving was nice, what was really nice was getting my niece to like me, at least temporarily. I resorted to an electronic bribe. Melanie had told me that one of her friends had downloaded a song to play which amused Veronica. So I went to the App store and download a couple of games for Veronica to play on my phone.
The game is pretty simple, fitting for a two year old. Basically there are large rectangles covering a picture. The simple version, you just touch the square and it goes away. The next most advanced level has a little flower on one of the rectangles indicating that that one has to be pushed first. The third level has dots on the rectangles like dice, and the fourth level has actual numbers. The version with the dots was hit or miss with Veronica, so we mostly played the one with the flowers.
Once Veronica saw that I had a game on my phone she came right over. It took a bit of explaining but she figured it out pretty quickly. The funny thing was that after about five minutes of playing, she got tired of pushing the rectangles herself. So she would grab my finger and use my finger to press the button instead. All told it probably kept her amused for half an hour or so.
Later Veronica came over to me and put her hand in my pocket. "Phone Game" she said. So I pulled out my phone and let her play for a while. Then she'd get bored and wander away. This kept up for a while, with Veronica coming over and saying "Phone Game" and I would load it up for her.
Of course, right after she was done playing, she didn't like me much. But I figured out how to make it more fun for her, a second level bribe. Whenever she would push the correct square, the phone would make a faint click sound. So I started saying "Click" when she pushed it. She found this very amusing. She even started saying click as well.
There was also a faint buzzer sound when she would push the wrong rectangle, so I started saying "RNNNT" when she would push the wrong rectangle. She enjoyed the buzzing so much that she would intentionally press the wrong one just to hear me buzz. She would go through all of the show rectangles (except the one she was supposed to push). This would leave her with a fierce case of the giggles. Perhaps the first time I've heard her giggle.
Anyway, the e-bribe worked well enough that she would actually sit on my lap. When we were done playing the game, she even let me read her a couple of books. Although her idea of reading Winnie the Pooh was turning the page when I was only a paragraph or two through. Melanie was quite amused by the "madlibs" like resulting story.
Of course, the good-will I had garnered wore off over night. She wasn't as standoffish as she had been, but she wouldn't let me read her a book. It was also the day I was leaving, so I didn't have a chance to rebribe her sufficiently. At least now I know how to win the heart of a two year old.
