Twinkle: Fun Sink Served My 2-Year-Old A Harsh Dose of Reality

E's love affair with the Eiffel Tower started with a Hartstrings nightgown featuring the motif. First she refused to wear any other pajamas to sleep and pushed me to let her wear the nightgown to school. Next she started building Eiffel Towers with blocks. Then she started saying "I'm flying like a baby birdie on the Eiffel Tower" while swinging on the swingset. And now she sees Eiffel Towers everywhere she goes. She yells and points "Eiffel Tower!" every time we pass a church steeple or cell phone tower.

It's adorable and I love it, because she's 2 and it's OK with me if she believes that every cell phone tower is beautiful and architecturally significant. I sort of love it, and it's become a game. We'll say, "Look E--an Eiffel Tower!" whenever we see one that fits her definition. When there's not one around, she'll lament the fact that there are no Eiffel Towers in sight.

Apparently Fun Sink told her what's up: there's only one Eiffel Tower and it's in Paris and there aren't any real Eiffel Towers around here. She said that there are models of Eiffel Towers in places like Kings Island (when she was dealing this harsh lesson in reality, she had to emphasize the word "models," like the joyless schoolmarm that she is) but the one true Eiffel Tower is in France. So buck up, E, and stop seeing beauty and finding joy in what other people find mundane. That is just a boring old cell phone tower and an eyesore, and the sooner you learn it the better.

Now A, smart and sassy five-year-old that she is, knows the facts and fiction surrounding the Eiffel Tower, but unlike Fun Sink she's kind enough not to ruin it for her sister. In fact, A will be the first one to join the fun and say, "Hey, look, E--there's an Eiffel Tower!" 

And thank goodness the lesson about models went right over E's head. But doesn't that just make you sad? And angry? That Fun Sink would just take the joy away from E like that, all in the name of some facts? She has her whole life to learn what's true and false about the one true Eiffel Tower, but right now she is 2. Let her have a little bit of magic. It makes me want to keep that evil witch far away from my children's impressionable imaginations.