Things you don’t expect to hear at night
Overheard from the top of the stairs, about 15 minutes after the preschooler was supposed to be asleep: “Mommyo, can the scorpion sleep with me tonight?”
Gentle reader, before you speed-dial Children’s Protective Services, please read on for some important background information:
My husband and I recently took a cruise in the Western Caribbean. Each night on our seven-night, hurricane-skirting journey, the housekeeping staff would fold two towels in the shape of a different animal and leave them on the foot of our bed. And each night we would email a picture of that day’s towel animal to our daughter, who was staying with her grandparents.
My daughter apparently was quite enthralled by the daily Moment of Towel, and asked repeatedly whether we could bring a towel animal home for her. We couldn’t, for obvious Unfolding-Related reasons, but we did acquire the official Carnival Cruise lines reference text on Towel Animal Folding.
As folded by the good people on the Carnival Conquest. Our scorpion was a great deal less recognizable. And considerably less threatening, thanks to the cheerful little bees and honey pots printed all over the Winnie-the-Pooh cloth we used to make the tail.
Today my daughter and I used the instructions in the book to make a scorpion out of two of her old burp cloths.
Our regular towels are too thick to fold properly. Burp cloths aren’t exactly right either. They’re thin enough, but not quite the right shape, which requires you to do an extra fold or two to make the animal turn out right. And they are really floppy, so once you get the right shape, the animal sags a bit. I think I’ll try starching the burp cloth before folding tomorrow’s animal.
CATERPICKLES 
What are you thinking?