Fiona Comes Out of the Closet

Family lore has it that when I was Fiona's age I used to play a game where my grandmother and I would pretend to ride the subway by sitting down in the closet. Apparently, Fiona isn't going to play the same game (given that she has Queens-based parents with a car as opposed to Brooklyn-based parents without she doesn't ride the subway very often), but she has come up with two games she likes to play with the walk-in closets in our apartment.

First, she likes to go into the closet in our bedroom and close the door as far as she can (the door doesn't latch shut easily, which is good, because Fiona is still a ways from mastering knobs). We then talk about how much we miss Fiona and how we wonder where she's gone as giggles emanate from behind the closet door. Fiona then throws the door open and shouts "surprise!"

The pantry closet, on the other hand, has become a pretend front door. Fiona says "doorbell, who is it?" and then opens the door to greet Aunt Kathy, or Nana and Pop, or Grandma and Papa, or whomever she's decided has come to visit (this was particularly neat when Aunt Kathy actually showed up in person last night less than an hour after Fiona had been conjuring her from the pantry). This morning the game seemed to have evolved to the point where some of her toys go away (to work, I think) behind the pantry door. We all had to give her corn popper a kiss and a hug before Fiona put it in the pantry, said good-bye, and closed the door.