Maddie Suddenly Sees

Her best friend Clara was the source of Maddie's revelation.

"Maddie, you can't move to Utah," she said. "Because you have such great princess dresses."

Later, as we were telling bedtime stories, Maddie reflected on her friend's concern: "Are there princess dresses in Utah?"

"Yes."

More thinking. "Will we have a yellow house in Utah?"

"No, honey, we'll have a gray house."

"But we can come back to the yellow house when we're done with Utah, right?"

"Not to the same one, but we can look at moving to a different yellow house," I fudged. "But you know, our new house in Utah is across the street from a big park," I diverted.

"How big?"

A successful redirect.