Kelly waited for whatever horror next awaited her; would she be thrown around the playpen, put in Sara’s diaper, or drawn on?
Sara continued to stare at her shrunken cousin as though expecting her to do something before she finally spoke, “snackie!”
Kelly felt her body go numb, “no Sara, not a snackie!”
“Snackie!” Sara repeated as she started toddling across the playpen.
“You don’t want to eat me, Sara,” Kelly told the giant toddler, “I taste terrible, like yucky poopy.”
Sara picked up a toy bowl and a spoon, “snackie!”
Kelly braced herself for horror by closing her eyes and waited to become her cousin’s food, but nothing happened. Eventually, Kelly opened her eyes and saw the toy spoon in front of her. Kelly looked to her cousin; did Sara want the shrunken teen to climb on the spoon?
Sara lightly shook the spoon, “dolly snackie.”
When Sara shook the spoon once more, Kelly understood, “oh, snack time for me?” Sara nodded. Kelly pretended to take a bite from the spoon, “yummy.” Sara smiled and began to stir the spoon in the bowl before presenting it to Kelly again, who pretended to retake a bite. The process repeated for ten minutes before Sara replaced the bowl and spoon with a plastic baby bottle and put it to Kelly’s mouth.
After a spoon-feeding and bottle feeding, Kelly could see where this was going, and though it was humiliating, it was preferable to being a surrogate pacifier. Kelly pretended to suck from the bottle for five minutes before Sara took it away, “good dolly,” Sara praised, “you make all gone.”
Kelly patted her stomach, “it was yummy, thank you, Sara.”
Sara put down the bottle and put Kelly partway over her shoulder before she started to pat her cousin’s back gently. Kelly sighed to herself as she thought about what her friends would say about her if they could see her now, being burped by her baby cousin. Kelly let out a loud fake burp, “good dolly,” Sara repeated. Sara shuffled her way to a corner of the playpen where her stuffed animals were waiting for her, “nap time,” she declared as she laid Kelly down on the stomach of a teddy bear. Kelly gave a fake yawn, closed her eyes, and made fake snoring noises. Kelly waited until she heard Sara wander away before she let herself peek out of her eye and saw Sara had temporarily found something else to occupy herself with which gave Kelly time to think…