Further Easter Egg Adventures

Yesterday I brought Fiona home from day care and started cooking dinner. Fiona hovered around the kitchen for a little while begging for food, and it soon became clear that she wasn't going to make it all the way to dinner time (we've had to push dinner time back ever since Andrea took a job that doesn't get her home until 7). I opened the refrigerator to give her a yogurt, which is what we usually do in these situations.

Fiona saw the bowl of colored eggs on the top shelf and announced "I want an Easter egg!"

I nodded and let her choose an egg. I offered to peel the egg, but she refused. She wanted to carry it around first. So I let her do that and returned my attention to the rice and beans on the stove when suddenly I heard a crack. I looked to my right and saw an egg lying on the kitchen floor.

"Oh no!" Fiona cried. "My egg broke. I need a new one."

I picked it up. The shell had a small crack, but it was hard-boiled, and she'd planned on eating it anyway.

"It's fine," I told her. "We'll just peel off the shell like we were going to and then you can eat it."

"No, I need a new one," Fiona replied.

"Fiona, this egg is fine."

"It's cracked!"

"But we were going to crack the shell anyway to peel it, right?" I asked, stupidly trying to use logic on a toddler.

"No, I need a new one!"

"This egg is fine." For some reason I didn't want to back down, stupidly hoping I could out-stubborn a toddler.

"No!"

"Fiona, you can eat this egg!"

"Noooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

And now I was history's worst monster. Fiona fled into her room and started screaming and crying into her pillow. The walls shook. The floor quaked. The neighbors prepared to dial child welfare.

After she calmed down I coaxed her to reemerge to the kitchen.

"I want a new egg," she said.

"You don't want this egg?" I asked, holding it up. "It's fine."

"No, it's not. It's cracked."

I relented. It was just an egg, and we had a whole bowl full, and nobody else in our household was going to eat hard-boiled eggs anyway. I opened the refrigerator door and let her choose another egg.

"But Fiona," I told her. "If this one cracks, that's it. I'm not getting any more."

"Okay," she replied.

She carried her egg around the kitchen for a moment. I was once again the greatest daddy in the history of daddies, bearing no resemblance to that awful man who had so tortured her mere minutes ago.

"I want a juice," Fiona declared.

"Get me your cup and I'll get you a juice," I responded, trying to figure out what to rub on the chicken before throwing it on the grill pan.

"You hold my egg." She held it out to me.

"Fiona, I--"

I stopped myself. I was going to tell her I couldn't, but then I thought of her trying to carry both her juice cup and the egg, and how that might be too much for a three year-old. Surely I could hold an egg for a few seconds; the chicken could wait that long.

"All right, give me the egg," I told her, extending my hand.

Fiona handed me the egg and ran off to the living room to retrieve her juice cup. I cupped the egg in my left hand and looked back at the chicken. I didn't want to drop the egg, so I made sure I had a good firm grip, strong, but not too--

Crack.

I stopped. Looked down at my left hand.

Uh-oh.