Today I taught my daughter how to use the intercom feature on our cordless phones. What started out as a way to make pretend phone calls quickly mutated into playing at spies. Soon we were on secret missions to rescue giraffes and the like who had been kidnapped by Bad Guys. She’d reconnoiter and call to let me know when it was safe. Then she’d make the rescue and together we’d barely escape back to her secret hidden spy base. We even came up with super-secret spy codenames to use on the “walkie-talkies.” She was Zippy. My codename was Bluebird. Little brother was Lightning Bolt, briefly, but decided he’d rather be Spiderman. And Mom was Double-O Gladys.

At one point we pretended to visit Grandma’s house where we found a baby but no Grandma. For added drama, I postulated that Grandma wouldn’t just leave a baby alone so something must have happened to her. But thankfully, Zippy informed me that Grandma was just at the grocery store and I’d have known that if I’d just looked in the magic mirror.

Later she used the intercom to keep me appraised of her current status while she watched Sleeping Beauty and made plans to play spies again after it was over. The highlight of the evening was when we made a daring escape through a tunnel to an underground cave where we waited out the Bad Guy search parties. It was here where we met a friendly, Spanish speaking bear who brought us strawberry flavored chicken pops to eat while we quietly waited for the Bad Guys to move on.