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"What are you doing, baby?" Toby asked. Sasha was playing quietly with a crowd of dolls and stuffed animals scattered in small groups across the floor. "These are some of your old toys."

"I'm playing "Work," Daddy." Sasha smiled up at him from the floor.

"I see. So this is the office?" Toby was amused and slightly alarmed.

His daughter nodded. "That's you over there." She pointed to her favorite stuffed animal, a well-worn droopy rabbit, carefully propped up on a pillow in the corner away from the other toys. A picture of Sasha that usually sat on the coffee table was placed just in front of it.

Toby was touched, but he couldn't help but chuckle. "That's just like my desk! What else have you got?"

Sasha grinned. "Well, that's the counting apartment, there." She pointed solemnly to a group of three toys grouped together: a tiny blonde porcelain doll seated on a cushion overlooking a jack-in-the-box, and something furry. Toby approached the pile to get a better look. The fur belonged to a Teddy Ruxpin, one of those teddy bears from the 80s that should have been cute and cuddly but instead were oddly creepy. Toby knelt, reaching out toward the jack-in-the-box, which was closed.

"It's broken, Daddy. No matter how much I try, I can't get him to come out of there."

Toby nodded. "Me, either, sweetheart. Who else is here?"

"Well, there are these girls over here," Sasha replied, moving over to another pile. First she picked up a Chatty Cathy doll with dark hair. Toby recognized it as one his sister had had when she was a girl.

"Be careful with that one, baby. It's older than you think, and could break really easily."

Sasha set the doll down gently and picked up another one, which had a bottle. "This one doesn't want to lose her bottle, Daddy."

"You're absolutely right, honey. She probably should, but she doesn't want to. Who's next?"

"Umm, him!" Sasha pointed to a gingerbread man-shaped cooking sitting on a napkin on the couch. "He won't be here very long!" She laughed as she gobbled up the cookie and moved on to the next pair.

"These two are sellers, but I only like this one." Scooting over to another pair of toys, Sasha picked up a cuddly doll in a frilly dress. "She's nice. He's cranky." She pointed to the stuffed puppy staring dolefully up at him. It didn't look mean to Toby, but he figured that "world-weary" was a hard concept for a kindergartener, so he just nodded as she shifted over a bit.

She contemplated the lone action figure for a moment before picking it up and showing it to him."This guy is weird."

"I couldn't agree more. He doesn't sit alone, though, does he?"

Sasha giggled. "No, but the other one is over there." She pointed to the end-table, where Toby kept the phone plugged in. Seated on it were Sasha's Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy dolls- perfectly matched, limp ragdolls slumped inertly together. Toby made a sound that closely resembled his daughter's giggle.

"That's everybody, honey. Great job!"

"No, Daddy, there's one more. Over there."

Under the coffee-table, Sasha had set up her old Fisher Price train set. Sitting on the engine was an old sock puppet. "That's my friend Michael's train. It doesn't work too good, but sometimes I can get him to go around in circles really, really fast," she explained.

Toby smiled. "That's right, baby. You're absolutely right." His daughter was clearly a genius.