Puzzle

After we read stories, Lyla gets to play quietly in her room for 10 minutes before we turn off the lights for good.  Or 20 minutes.  Sometimes we forget about her.

She's been doing dinosaur puzzles, and no matter what time I enter the room to finally get her to bed, she has just begun a puzzle.  Then I need to figure out whether to battle her over the fact that now it's definitely bedtime, or wimp out and let her muddle her way through the puzzle.  And it's serious muddling.  Suspiciously, she becomes putzy when she knows it's the last puzzle before lights-out.

Tonight I distracted her and then surreptitiously added pieces to the puzzle.  "Lyla, there's a unicorn in your closet!" Four edge pieces while she looked.

"Daddy.  There's no unicorn."

"Just kidding.  Do your puzzle."

A minute later: "Lyla, can you go look at the carpeting in my room and come back and tell me what color it is?"

"Um, sure."

Edge piece, edge piece, triceratops horns go there, big tree thing--let's see, oh got it--and a pterodactyl covering half the sun, corner piece...little footsteps returning.  "White, Daddy."

"White-ish.  Here, you have three pieces left."