Lyla dresses her brother up in her dress-up clothes.
Lyla quietly crept out of her room and glanced down the hallway to make sure neither one of her parents her watching. When the coast was clear, she tiptoed down the hallway and disappeared into the bathroom. There were a lot of things that the five year old knew she wasn't allowed to do. She wasn't allowed to touch the stove while her mommy was cooking, she wasn't allowed to play on her daddy's phone without asking and she wasn't allowed to tell her baby brother to "shut up." Amongst the long list of things she wasn't allowed to do, on that list was playing with her mommy's makeup. Still, she climbed on the back of the toilet seat and grabbed the black velvet bag that Jo kept all her makeup inside of. When she had the bag in her possession, she climbed back down off the toilet seat and peeked out of the door again. There were no signs of Alex or Jo, so she tiptoed right back to her bedroom and shut the door.
"I'm back…told you I wasn't gonna be long." She walked over to the swing that her baby brother was resting in and sat down in front of him. The baby lay asleep in his swing, relatively undisturbed by his big sister's actions. He had fallen asleep in the arms of his father and when he was sound asleep, Alex had nestled him in his swing so he could take a shower and Jo could finish up dinner. Somewhere along the line, his older sister got bored with watching TV alone in her room and she decided, when nobody was around, that she would drag her brother's swing to her room to play with him. "I have this, Ally?" She put her hand on her brother's pacifier. "Thank you." She pulled the pacifier out of his mouth and put it down on the floor.
The baby stared at his sister and poked his lip out, preparing to cry over the fact that she stole his pacifier out of his mouth. Lyla sensed that her brother was going to cry and if he cried, she would get into trouble for playing with her mother's makeup, so she put her hand on his head and stuck her tongue out at him like she had seen her daddy do. The baby's bottom lip began to quiver, so Lyla started to rub his head. "Don't cwy, Ally. Kay? Don't cwy. You gemme in twouble if you cwy." Although her baby brother didn't boast much hair on top of his head, she still made a point to rub it and wiggle her tongue in an effort to make him laugh instead. Alex tilted his head at his sister and curled his lips up into a drool-filled, gummy smile. "I'm so funny, huh?" Lyla didn't want to admit it but over the last few weeks, she had really began to grow some kind of attachment to her brother. Once she started to view him as the ultimate baby doll, she found that she kind of enjoyed holding his bottles and pushing him around in her baby's strollers. Her daddy didn't like it when she put bonnets on his head because that made him look like a girl but her mommy didn't care.
"I think…purple is good." The five year old picked a tube of bright purple lipstick from her mother's makeup bag and uncapped it. She didn't think her mother would mind if she used her purple lipstick because the only time she could ever recall her mommy putting on such an odd shade on her lips was when she dressed up as Sulley last Halloween. She twisted the bottom of the lipstick tube and held it in her hand like she was holding a pencil. "Hold still." Gently, she squeezed the cheeks of her brother and began to color on his tiny lips. Her mommy and daddy were always telling her that she should play with her little brother and today's the day she finally decided to listen to them. After all, she was always looking for new live subjects to put makeup on. "You look gweat." She recapped the lipstick and stood back to admire her work. "You gotta put this on next." She picked up the bonnet she always tied around her baby doll's head and stuffed it on her brother's head. She tied it carefully underneath his neck but for some reason, Alex wrinkled his nose and gaped his mouth open, preparing to wail. "No…shhh! Shhh, Ally don't! You gonna gemme in twouble! Shh!"
She picked up the pacifier again and tried to shove it back in her brother's mouth to get him to quiet down, but the baby just brought his hands up to his mouth and chewed on them while he cried. "I take it off! I sowwy…I sowwy, I take it off." Lyla untied the bonnet but not before her bedroom door swung open and both her parents busted up her party. She jumped back, away from her brother and tried to hide Jo's makeup bag behind her back but she knew that she was busted because her brother had purple lipstick on his lips, his cheeks and even on his hands. "…We was playin…" The five year old guiltily looked up at her parents and cowered.
Jo looked over at Alex who was standing beside her and back down at her baby. The baby had lipstick on, a bonnet on his head and sparkly stick-on gems on his earlobes. Jo wanted to be mad at her daughter but she just couldn't bring herself to do anything but giggle. Even Alex, who hated the thought of his son being dressed up like a little girl, found it within himself to laugh. "Awww, Alex…what'd she do to you, handsome?" Jo knelt down at the swing and began to unbuckle her son. The baby was screaming his head off because the bonnet on his head was on too tight. "Lyla, what did I tell you about putting makeup on the baby?"
"…Nuffing?" Lyla tilted her head and raised her eyebrow because her mother really had never told her anything about putting makeup on her baby brother. This was the first time she had ever done it. She did know that she wasn't allowed to do it because she wasn't allowed to even put bonnets on him without being yelled at by her dad and anytime she played in her mother's makeup, she got yelled at but still. Her mother had never mentioned anything about putting makeup on the baby.
"Well don't do it again, bubbles." Jo looked up at Alex, who was still laughing so hard that he had to cover his mouth. "I thought for sure you'd be more pissed with this." She looked back down at her son who had stopped crying.
"I gotta take a picture of this…" Alex shook his head, still laughing. "Perfect discipline for when he gets older. Perfect blackmail." He took his phone from his pocket. "If he doesn't behave, I'll send this out to all his friends. This is going in the little baby book thing, too. Good thinking, Ly…real good thinking. This is genius."
"Thanks." Lyla blushed and finally felt some relief for the fact that she didn't seem to be in trouble.