Favouritism

I came home from a meeting at ten past nine last night and - surprise! - not! - Mabel was still awake. Wide awake, downstairs, with Daddy. She had drawn me a picture of a machine that would say I love you. Or churn out teddy bears. Or something. I picked her up and she snuggled happily into my arms, head on my shoulder, clearly more than ready for bed.

"Say night night to Daddy."
"..."
"Say I love you to Daddy."
"I love you."

Daddy wasn't too offended. Because we all know it's not really me she loves.

"Do you know why I love you?"
"I can hazard a guess, yes."
"Because of your booboos!"

If Daddy had the booboos, he'd be the one in favour, no mistake about it.

Last night she only (yes, insert eyeroll here) woke three times, and for two of those she went back to sleep without nursing. Instead, whoever goes to her - it's me, unless she wakes when B is still up, in which case he gives it a go and sometimes it works for him - tells her a story. When it's 2am my stories are not very interesting and tend to tail off after a few sentences. I have a sort of a formula at this point. It goes something like this:

Once upon a time, there was a little girl called [Mabel/Violet/Bonnie/whatever name is in favour with her just now, or some totally random name that pops into my head, maybe Ermingarde or Apple]

and she had [no friends at all/a puppy/a pet alligator/a dragon called Billy/you get the picture]

and every afternoon, [girl] and [pet/friend/all by herself] used to walk [down by the river/into the deep dark forest/along the beach] [throwing stones into the water/talking about their day/discussing quadratic equations] until it was time to go home for dinner.

One day while they were [doing whatever], they came upon [an amazing thing] and they said [blah blah by now I'm mostly asleep and I start ... speaking more slowly... and realising that I just had a very short dream there instead of continuing... and maybe I can get out of bed now...   ...    ....     ]

And if I'm very lucky, then I get to go back to my own bed for another couple of hours till I'm called on for the next installment and I have to take up where I left off.

If I'm not lucky, she's far more awake than I, and she announces, "That's the end of the story" and claims the booboos for her own. I'm too sleepy to stop her.