Puh-lease, Mum Part 2 (Anna)

There's a sock - adult size - on the bedroom floor, so she brings it up to me.
"Pliz", she says, frantically tapping her chest with the sign for please. She hands me the sock.
I take it.
"Hi," I say. "You've got a sock."
She looks at me expectantly, and says "pliz" a little louder.
"Shall I put it on?" I ask. "Shall I put the sock on my foot?" and I start to put the sock on my foot.
She grabs it off me and hands it to me again.
I take it.
"Pliz," she insists.
"Would you like me to put it on YOUR foot?" I ask and bend down to put the sock on HER foot.
She growls, like a little lion, and looks at me impatiently. She pulls the sock away from her foot and puts it in my hand.
"Pliz," she says, scowling.
I play peek-a-boo with it. I tickle her nose with it. I fly it around the room like a sick pigeon. I throw it on the floor. I throw it in the air. I throw it in the bath. All of this is wrong, and she is getting angrier and angrier at me. She has stopped asking nicely, resorting to a fingernail-on-chalkboard screech every time I get it wrong.
She grabs the sock and walks away. I didn't know that toddlers could huff. She turns her back on me in disgust.
Luckily, our daughter is patient and kind with slow learners, so she comes back a few moments later and generously gives me another chance.
"Pliz," she says, with a huge toothy grin, as if I have been deliberately holding out on her and she has to up the ante, laying on the cute factor. She is extremely cute and I'm not trying to teach her important world lessons abot the fact that she can't always get what she wants. I am genuinely baffled.
I tickle her belly with it, knowing that's not what she wants, but hoping beyond hope that it might work. I put the sock on my head and make a silly face. She laughs, but then gets back to business.
"Pliz," she says.
I put it on HER head.
And...she melts down. She cries. And cries. I am a terrible mother and have let her down in the worst possible way. She will never forgive me. She concedes to being cuddled, but cries all the way out the bedroom. All the way down the stairs. All the way along the hall. Her face is red, her eyes scrunched up. I can see her tonsils. It is the end of the world.

Eventually, she gets distracted by a little metal tin that she absolutely must explore. She wriggles out of my arms to go and play, and peace reigns again.


Later, I tell Caroline about my colossal failure as a parent. She smiles and tells me in less than two seconds what Emma was asking for.

"Hand puppets!"

Duh. Of course.