Unlike her sister, Dani had no trouble choosing one item in Toys ‘R’ Us. In fact, she knows exactly where the aisle she wants is, the aisle with the babies.

Dani loves babies, and I used this to my great advantage, several times throughout the visit successfully buying her cheap baby dolls as bribes for good behavior. And bribe you must, because to this child right now, “no” means “yes” and “I said no!” means “Bite me.” I even managed to take her incident-free to a restaurant where you have to wait for a waitress to bring your food by using the power of quarters in vending machines full of those plastic bubble-encased toys. I loaded my purse with them and made them last the entire meal. I’m just so proud of my auntie brilliance.

Speaking of meals, the poor kid had a lapse in potty training on day 5 of my visit. My mother, handling the event, called out accusingly, angrily from the bathroom to my sister, “She has diarrhea. What have you been feeding this poor child?” My sister looked at me, since I, and not daycare, had been feeding them much of the week. Hm. Day 1: Wendy’s with me. Day 2: Burger King with my sister. Day 3: Gino’s pizza with me. Day 4: KFC with the family. Earlier on Day 5: Hot dog and cheese fries at the mall. Well.

Dani has a great walk, a mess-with-me-I’ll-mess-up-your-face-Punk-but-not-if-it-will-mess-up-my-hair walk. She is fairly prim but with the standard 2-year-old layer of food slime on her face. In addition to babies, she loves climbing up to precarious locations and standing up in her high chair and car seat in order to turn those into precarious locations as well. Most of her sentences start with “I want,” but her manners are impeccable, and she needs no reminding.

I especially enjoyed taking her to the park and playground. She led the way, trooping with long (for her) strides so that her adorable blondeness swished back and forth on her head. She wanted to check everything out: every piece of playground equipment, the walking trail, pavilions, piles of goose droppings. And she never, not for five seconds, stopped narrating the entire adventure. Yak yak yak. A happy girl.