House of the Flying Mermaid

Love, Actually

2012-01-25T12:44:00.000-08:00

This morning at 6 a.m when I went out to warm up the car, Moiya wanted to go to and scrape frost off the windows. I pointed out that with the defrosters on, this wasn’t really necessary and was met with such a crestfallen look that I hastily added “But if you could do that, sweetheart, it would really be great.”

So I stood around in the frigid morning watching my offspring attempting to wield the big ice scraper. She kept angling it so that only a sliver of the blade contacted the window and scraping in tiny, tiny strokes. Progress was slow, but she clearly was having a blast and taking great pride in her work.

And without warning, as sometimes happens, I was filled with such an overpowering love for her that I felt like my chest was surely too small to contain it. It never happens at sensible times or over sensible things. It’s always silly, quirky things that cause the floodgates to open. At such time I used to scoop her into a sudden bear hug, but increasingly that elicits a squirming “DAD-DEEE. STOPPIT!!”

So now I just stand, and watch, and grin stupidly. And realize that, marriages notwithstanding, until I had a child I had no idea what love was.

Pretty is Good...

2012-01-25T11:14:00.000-08:00

Yesterday one of my coworkers walked into my office and wanted to know why I had a stuffed lamb and bear sitting on either side of my computer monitors. I explained that my daughter had made me promise I would bring them in from the car and keep them with me so that they wouldn’t be cold and lonesome till she got out of school.

He looked at me like I had lost my tiny mind.

Quite apart from the fact that a promise is a promise, I was happy to do it because that is something I like about my daughter – she thinks about others. (Sometimes the others are real and sometimes not, but that is beside the point). And I tell her so: “Pretty is good. Smart is better. Kind is best.”

Her Mom and I would love to claim some credit, but I think it is just her nature. She carries lost bugs outside “so their Mommy and Daddy can find them.” We’ve always gotten reports from school that she looks out for the less popular kids. When we go out to dinner with my Mom it is a point of great pride for her Daddy that Moiya is always careful to thank her servers. (Sadly, I observe that relatively few adults do so).

And it is not uncommon for her to give away her toys. Jacquelyn tells me that at Christmas they had guests and that before they left, Moiya went to her room and picked out some of her toys for the adults to take away with them as Christmas presents.

So when we’re in public and we’re watching the wild antics of other kids screaming for attention or for toys, Moiya sometimes just stands with a bemused expression of her face. I’ll usually bend down, kiss the top of her head and say “thank you.”

If I ask “do you know what I’m thanking you for?” she’ll grin at me and say “oh yeah.”

Pretty is good. Smart is better. Kind is best

Note to Self:

2012-01-11T05:57:00.001-08:00

There's just so many vital little pieces of information that nobody ever bothers to tell you. For the record, when you let your daughter paint your nails with both pink polish AND a layer of purple glitter polish, be aware that while the polish remover will strip the pink off admirably, it will have no effect on the purple glitter what. so. ever.

(It may be that other shades of glitter nail polish behave similarly. I only have data on the purple and hesitate to jump to conclusions.)

On the up side, I provided almost infinite mirth to the guys at the garage when I took my car in for maintenance.

How to Melt a Daddy

2012-01-11T05:44:00.000-08:00

My daughter made me snowflake decorations for the wall of my office. And before she gave them to me she kissed each one "So you'll know they have my love in them."
♥♥♥

Correction

2011-11-28T10:10:00.000-08:00

In one of my posts of 11/04/201, I incorrectly quoted Moiya as using the expression "as blind as a duck." That's how I remembered it, and my scrawled note to myself was indecipherable.

However yesterday Moiya was chiding my inability to find something directly under my nose and used the expression again so that I am now able to post the corrected version.

I am - according to my daughter - "as blind as a pigeon."

Snapshots

2011-11-04T12:18:00.000-07:00

Moiya’s Mom remarried and so I’m sole custodian of Moiya and Wicker for a week or so until the happy couple return from their honeymoon. It’s been - as Moiya once describe me – “challenging.” For much of the time Moiya has been mad because Mommy and Larry left town without her. Wicker has been mad because elderly cocker spaniels don’t take to having their routine’s disrupted. And Simon has been mad because there’s been an elderly cocker spaniel disrupting her routine. (Simon is a fairly tolerant cat, but apparently having an uninvited nose poked up her bum by the same dog who just ate all her food – and litter – is beyond the kitty pale).

So I’ve been pretty much public enemy number one to pretty much all of the females I share quarters with for pretty much all of the week.

Challenging.

But there have been moments. One weekday evening after Moiya and I got home and were engaged in what we refer to as “draining the dog”, we decided to walk the long apartment complex greens down to the little creek that used to be the “turn-around point” in Moiya’s tricycle days. It was surprising weather for November – warm and sunny with balmy breezes. And before I knew what was happening, Moiya took off running as fast as her legs would carry her. Which in turn prompted Wicker to go bounding after her with a burst of speed I would not have thought possible in a beast her age. And because I was attached to the dog, I found myself being dragged along.

So there we three were in the gloaming of a Fall day, Moiya racing with the speed and joy of youth followed by an deaf, fat dog trying to outrun old age. And bringing up the rear, an out-of-shape man with arthritic knees wishing he could match the energy of either one of them.

And somewhere along that mad and breathless run, I found myself having a snapshot moment… one of those brief and infrequent events when time crystallizes and you become aware that there is occurring around you a single moment of perfection. A moment when the mind pulls back from reality and says “Remember this. It will not come again.”

And so you do. You try like hell to remember. The senses sharpen, time slows, and you record every motion, every breath, every color, and every sound in the attempt to form a snapshot of the single perfect second. Which will never come again.

And then, just as suddenly as it had arrived, the moment was gone, leaving behind three sweaty, panting, grinning (don’t tell me dogs can’t grin) individuals trying to catch their breath before starting home again. We found a hillside that the mowers had not yet denuded of dandelion puffballs and took turns (just Moiya and I… Wicker was intent on a squirrel) picking them and releasing the spores into the evening air. Moiya assured me that it was important to throw the emptied stems as far as possible into the air. “Because it works better that way! It does!” Then with hardly a break in the narritive, “Walk like we’re fairies, Daddy, and we have a fairy dog!” And off she went, the mad girl with waving arms in place of wings, and the dog who would be young again.

And I thought to myself as I trudged along behind them how very much I loved them both.

More Silly Similies

2011-11-04T10:29:00.000-07:00

To my ongoing collection of Moiya similies (previously posted here) I happily add the following:

• "I'm as hot as a pickle"
• "You're just as poor as a seed"
• (on entering a dark room) "I'm as blind as a duck"

Episode 42

2011-11-04T10:23:00.000-07:00

Last night, Ken (aka Price Eduardo), Princessa (a new addition to the Barbie household) and Tangled (really Rapunzel but Moiya insists that the doll prefers to be known by the movie title) were fighting to free all of the Littlest Pet Shop animals from an adandoned "haunted" building where they had been imprisoned by a deranged Polly Pocket doll.

Ken's devoted companion/pet pig 'Pig' managed to save the day by rushing in and battering the front door down with his head.

It's going to just break my heart when Moiya finally gets old enough that she doesn't want to play with me any more.

I don't know... I suppose I'll have to get cable then.

Now We Know

2011-10-21T19:29:00.000-07:00

Found written on my daughter's white board:

"I love you Daddy because you make me laugh and you fart a lot and you play games with me."

So.. now we know the way to a girls' heart.

Boy Thoughts

2011-09-19T08:59:00.000-07:00

So Moiya's throwing a fit last night at bed time and demanding that I apologize for hurting her feelings. I told her I'd be glad to do so if she could tell me what I'd done. To which she responded "Well, if you don't know, I'm certainly not going to tell you!!"

And I'm standing there thinking, "Did we get married??"

Touchstone

2011-08-18T15:29:00.000-07:00

When the school year ended and it was time for Moiya to begin attending YMCA camp for the summer, she began showing signs of nervousness. This tends to take the forms of periods of silence alternating with picking deliberate quarrels with me. Finally she admitted one night as I was tucking her in that she was nervous about going into an unfamiliar environment and meeting new people. We talked about it and I told her that fear of new people and new situations was something with which her Daddy was – unfortunately – intimately familiar. So we got out of bed and I carefully wrote out her Mother’s cell phone number (though she knows it) and her Step-Father’s number, and my number, telling her that no matter what happened, if she needed to she could always contact one of us. Then I gave her a talisman. Once upon a time she had a locket with pictures of her Mom and I, but it surrendered to the rough handling of childhood years ago. And she has a picture of me by her bed at her Mom’s house, and a picture of her Mom and Step-Dad by her bed at my house so that no matter where she is, the people she’s missing won’t seem so far away.

So I hunted around for something of mine to give her to keep close to hand. At that hour of the night, all I could come up with was my spare pair of glasses. (On the other hand, for someone as nearsighted as I am, glasses are a very personal item). I tucked the numbers and the glasses into the pocket of her backpack with instructions that if she was nervous, all she would have to do was to touch them and she’d know that part of me was close by. And with that we went to bed.

Moiya assures me that it worked. As she put it, “I only felt scared for a little while. But then I remembered and it was better.”

And so some weeks later, when I had to transition from classroom training to web-based and was deeply insecure at the prospect of sitting in a room with a microphone and lecturing to people around the country that I cannot see (bear in mind that I’ve had a pathological terror of telephones for 58 years), Moiya gave me a talisman. She made me a beaded bracelet to take with me, so that “you won’t be scared.”

And son-of-a-gun – it works.

In days gone by, a touchstone was used to distinguish precious metals like gold, from base ones. So this is my touchstone . When I get nervous I can look at it and it reminds me all over again what is real and important – and what is not.

Wearing it also marks me as a very confident male. But that’s another matter.

Das Boot

2011-08-18T15:28:00.000-07:00

The internet is great if you’re trying to find new things to do with your child. I trawl the net every week and make lists of events. Some are scheduled for times when I don’t have Moiya. Some are too expensive. Others (like the Doctor Seuss celebration and the puppet shows at our local library) are free. Some are regular events - we have season tickets for the local dinner theatre’s children’s venue, and we’ll be making ourselves sick at our annual trip to the State Fair this weekend.

And then some come straight out of left field without warning. Like finding that the last vintage steamboat still in operation is planning a picnic cruise on Labor Day.

I pondered it for awhile wondering if a seven year old would really enjoy it – and then booked us anyway. I can never tell what may strike a spark with her – I didn’t think she would like the local art museum, but she still refers to it and has asked to go back. And as Moiya herself said when I shied off from taking her to the Frasier Arms Museum “Maybe I’ll like it, and even if I’m bored, it’s ok.”

So one fine, hot, sunny day, Moiya and I found ourselves cruising up the Ohio River on the Belle of Louisville.

We sat on the hurricane deck and watched the people on the shore glide by. We ate a rather wonderful luncheon of traditional American picnic fare. We got the see the steam engine (which was surprisingly silent – and turned Daddy into a gibbering eight-year-old boy) and the great paddle wheel, churning the waters and sending us surging against the current. And we almost danced the hokey-pokey in the ballroom with the rest of the passengers, but at the last minute I failed to convince my daughter that dancing with her old Dad in public would be a laugh. So we watched the other poor souls floundering around and had a laugh anyway

And I think – as best I can tell – we had a good time.

Camp Moiya

2011-08-18T15:27:00.001-07:00

This was how our living room looked for about a week. Moiya had been asking for me to set up her tent for several weeks and one weekend I finally got around to it so we could use it as the base of operations for Popcorn Night. We moved in her sleeping bag, her pillow-pets, and several stuffed animals. And then as I had just purchased a box of safety pins for a wholly unrelated purpose, Moiya brought down several of her baby blankets (which are usually used for tucking in her dolls) and pinned them over the opening (the tent is open on one side) to make doors. Thus was Camp Moiya established and there we spent the night playing cards, watching movies, playing Mario Kart, reading library books and (of course) eating popcorn. As I have some trouble fitting my whole self inside unless I’m sitting up, I placed my sleeping bag outside (on the “front porch”) and slept there. Moiya pulled her two main “doors” closed but left a small corner blanket pulled back to we could talk and hold hands while she fell asleep.

When the weekend had passed, Moiya wanted to know if we couldn’t sleep there Monday night. I opened my mouth to say the “no” she was expecting and to explain how we couldn’t possibly leave such a mess in the middle of the living room floor. And then I realized that I didn’t really have any sort of a convincing argument for saying no. It wasn't like anyone ever comes to visit. And the floor is actually less painful when my back is bothering me (which it was). So I brought down my alarm clock and Moiya brought down her night light. We had our dinner on trays in Camp Moiya and then turned in.

Living rooms are for living, after all.

Poop Cookies

2011-08-18T15:26:00.002-07:00

Nobody cares about this stuff but me. And someday Moiya is going to be horrified to find that I’ve written it all down. But damn it, she changes so quickly – I don’t realize it until I look at pictures I’ve taken as recently as six months ago and see how different Moiya looks. And the games that are an intimate part of our lives one week will be gone and forgotten in the next. (Just now, I've realized that the large cast of imaginary individuals whose voices I used to have to provide when we traveled are no longer a part of the playscape). This is the best time of my life. It will never come again. I want to remember.

And so I sit down from time to time and write things like this. Things about poop cookies.

I get to learn all sorts of games that Moiya brings home from school and the Y: card games ('War', 'Trash') playground games ('Doggy, Doggy, Where’s Your Bone', 'Blue Shoe'), and singing games ('Dog, Cat, Mouse', 'Calamine Lotion'). But my favorite (and the most ephemeral) games are the ones that spring from trivial occurrences. Moiya will sometimes reference (months after the fact) some passing silliness we engaged in. “Daddy, remember that game where you’re asleep and I wake you and you tell me to stay there and then I disappear and then there’s two of me?” Sometimes it takes some prodding, but usually I can dredge it out of my brain and another afternoon will past pleasantly.

Some games we revisit so many times that they actually earn regular names… like 'Poop Cookies', or the closely related 'Cutting Things Up'.

Back when Moiya was first potty-trained, she used to like company while she was attending to business. I suppose most children do. At some point along the way we began playing a game in which I would mime drawing a cookie out of hiding, exclaim at it’s magnificence, and then as I closed my eyes to savor the first bite, have it snatched away by my daughter who would regard my frantic searching for the purloined cookie with feigned innocence. Cookies came from everywhere – my pockets, from being the bath towels, even from an imaginary chest which was opened – slowly – with an imaginary key worn on an imaginary chain around my neck.

For whatever reason, this game continues to last. Long after others have been forgotten, I still get the call to “come and eat your cookies.”

From time to time, there have been variations. One day, after Moiya had snatched and eaten my “best and favorite cookie,” I asked her if it was good and receiving an affirmative, informed her that it was a “rat-poop cookie.” And a new game was born. From then on cookies were exchanged and eaten and then various revolting ingredients revealed – bird heads, cat poop, rabbit poop, snot, etc. (Well really.. what did you think a game called "Poop Cookies" would be about?).

A third variant appeared a few months back, generally only referred to as “Cutting Up Things.” It’s rather like rock, paper, scissors. You have to decide (privately) on the object ahead of time and hand it to the other player who may then either pet it, cut it in half, eat it, or throw it away. Only after the action has been taken is the nature of the object revealed. We’ve cut up bunnies, petted eyeballs, and thrown refrigerators. (Also thrown bunnies, cut up refrigerators and eaten eyeballs).

And all this for a quick visit to the toilet. Like I said – I know this is a weird entry. Only a parent finds their child’s bathroom habits interesting. But then – I keep this journal for me. To remember.

It is often inconvenient when Moiya suddenly runs for the bathroom and calls over her shoulder on her way up the stairs “Daddy, come and eat your cookies.” But I try to go when she asks, while she still wants me there. Like bubble baths and me holding her hand as we walk into school, I know that the time is approaching when, in the natural course of things, I will no longer be welcome. And as nice as it is to enjoy these things in memory – it is far, far better to enjoy them in the present.

“This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long”.

Even poop cookies.

Yes, Virginia.

2011-08-18T15:26:00.001-07:00

I have been remiss. Well, I’ve been remiss about LOTS of things, God knows – not the least of which has been my failure to blog more frequently. So many things have passed into our lives and out again without my noting them for my memory. But specifically I have been remiss in not mentioning last Christmas.

Since the divorce, one of the more painful elements of life has been the fact that I’ve never again gotten to be Santa or to see Moiya’s face on Christmas morning when she scrambles downstairs to see what magic has occurred in the night.

And this is with my consent. Jacquelyn has a large and boisterous family within easy travel distance and I have virtually none. A child should be surrounded by family at Christmas and Moiya is and for that I am grateful. But Christmas morning is one of the great joys of parenthood and I’ve not been able to see my daughter’s Christmas mornings since she was three.

Until this past year when Jacquelyn and Larry invited me to come and share Christmas morning with them and Moiya. It was an act of breathtaking kindness and generosity which absolutely needed recording here. That I did not do so then is not an indication of lack of gratitude, but just distraction.

And that oversight has now been remedied.

Yes, Virginia. There is a Santa Claus.

Imaginarium

2011-08-18T15:20:00.000-07:00

Last week Moiya’s Step-Dad and I took her to her school’s Orientation Night, getting ready for the start of second grade. Towards the end of the evening, Moiya insisted on going back to visit her first grade teacher, who made the wry observation that the only discipline problem she’d had with Moiya was that, given her imagination literally ANY object could be transformed into a toy.

And classroom discipline to the contrary, that is one of the things I love most about my daughter. She has very few expensive or trendy toys, and the few she does have rarely get played with. When we play, she’ll grab whatever is at hand and go with it. I’ve written on these pages about making swords from political flyers (which we still have, and still play with).

One afternoon Moiya wanted to see if her watercolor set could be used as face paint. I assured her that it could not but gave her my blessing to try. And son-of-a-gun, yes it can. The first night she painted straight up both my arms, covering them with Christmas trees, Pumpkins, cats, and more than a few things I was unable to identify. The following week she decided that we would both be rabbits (we started out as cats but experienced a mysterious transmogrification half-way through). We had a blast.

Let weeks Moiya’s big entertainment need was a deck of playing cards. I bought her two for the princely sum of $2.00 and she’s been playing with them ever since. When she ran out of games to teach me, she began making up new ones.

So I’m not really sure why, when we go visit my Mom, I bother to haul every amusement we possess along with us… basic parental insecurity I guess. Last time we went, before I had even managed to haul everything out of the car and up to Mom’s apartment, she and Moiya had broken out a pack of construction paper and were making headdresses for all the stuffed animals.

Shortly after that, Moiya wanted to know if I could teach her to make a mask. Specifically, she wanted a “scary vampire mask”. So I traced around her face, got out the scissors and crayons, and sacrificed one of Nonny’s rubber bands to make a mask. Then we made construction paper fingernails (red, because they’re bloody) and a construction paper sword. And then Moiya swept from room to room as a scary monster, wreaking havoc and repeatedly cutting off my head.

As a somewhat conservative Daddy, I suggested that Moiya might want to stop being a monster and try being something “nice.” “How about a Princess?” I asked. “I could make you a Princess mask.” Moiya grudgingly agreed to this and watched intently as I drew what I felt was a pretty good Princess mask, complete with crown and long golden curls. Then I asked what else her Princess should have.

“Fangs.”

“Wha.. ??”

“Big, pointy fangs, dripping blood.”

“On a Princess?”

“Uh-huh.”

“But why??”

“Because she’s a vampire Princess.”

Moiya did not add the “DUH!” but it was fairly obvious.

So Daddy sighed, grumbled, and added bloody fangs. After playing with those for awhile and having seen how I attached the rubber bands, Moiya took over and began what she called her “mask factory.” She’d take a piece of construction paper and using the initial mask as a template, trace around it to create new ones which she then cut out and colored. Before I knew it she had created and entire “monster family” of about seven masks, complete with a vampire dog. And as I practiced my “watching without watching” she proceeded to weave an entire Kabuki performance for her Grandmother, swapping masks to become the different characters in a long and wildly complex narrative. I’d have given anything to have been able to film it, but I knew that if I once reached for the camera, self-consciousness would break the spell.

And age will do that soon enough.

But in the meanwhile - though we have video and movies, electronic games and internet, our favorite, most engaging, and most complex form of entertainment is still play.

Shadowhead

2011-04-15T08:39:00.000-07:00

Walking across a parking lot last weekend, Moiya kept bobbing and weaving while she walked. When I tried to get her to stop, she explained "I'm stepping on your head.” I grumbled that she was nowhere near my head and to stop being so bloody silly. She just laughed, hopped a bit further, and said “Not your REAL head, Daddy! I’m stepping on your SHADOW HEAD!”

And sure enough, when I looked, she was jumping to land wherever my shadow moved across the asphalt. And, well – I was having none of that. So I ducked, and tried to step on HER shadow head instead. And before long we were lurching and ducking across the parking lot like two drunken spastics, trying to step on one another’s shadowheads while keeping our own out of reach. And laughing like loons.

Of course an hour later Moiya was howling that I was evil, that she wanted to live permanently with Mommy and Larry because they were her “real family” and I would be sad and she wouldn’t care because I was mean.

But that’s just how things goes I guess.

Parenthood. Keeping the makers of Prozac rich since 1977.

Summer

2011-04-15T08:31:00.000-07:00

It’s dandelion season again. I love seeing the bright splashes of yellow, no matter what damage they do to well-manicured lawns. And I respect their tenacity and ability to prosper in the unlikeliest of places. They are a gift – and one that I too often overlook until Moiya brings them to my attention. She’ll disappear from my distracted view when we are out and a short time later will reappear at my side with a fistful of bright yellow flowers which she presents with a “I picked these for you, Daddy.” And suddenly the day is brighter.

Occasionally they will expire by the time we get home. But usually I can get them there unscathed and we put them in a cup of water on the kitchen windowsill. And we wait for them to begin their magic dance.

The first time her dandelions closed after we put them in water, Moiya was disappointed. “Aww!” she exclaimed “they all died!” But I told her to wait and explained that they weren’t dead, but changing. “It's like a cocoon." I said. "Like butterflies. Inside they're changing and when they come out, they’ll be something different.” They first time she clearly thought I was bonkers. But a week later we awoke to find that the dandelions had reopened – come out of their cocoons. And that they were now perfect gossamer balls of white fluff.

Now after we’ve enjoyed the bright yellow flowers for a few days and they begin their sleep, we check on them every day for their reopening. And when they do, we take them into the back yard and blow on them, watching their seeds float away until they disappear from view into the blue summer sky.

Silly Similies

2011-03-22T13:38:00.000-07:00

I've always enjoyed Moiya's wonderfully off-the-wall similies, but sadly hadn't been writing them down until now. A few I've mentioned previously; others are new. I'll try to keep better tabs from now on. They have a lovely, surreal quality that leave me smiling:

"She's gonna have a headache like a horse."

"It's as quiet as a truck."

"I love you more than a rock and a piece of soap."

"He runs faster than an octopus!"

"She was still as a plant."

"Like I always do sometimes"

Barbie addendum

2011-03-07T05:27:00.000-08:00

I’ve been asked to make two corrections to my last post:

Moiya’s Mom has strenuously protested her innocence and says that she was not the one who first gave Moiya a Barbie.

The doll formerly known as Princessa is no longer known as Princessa. As of Saturday when we acquired a three-inch-tall Barbie with purple hair and wings from McDonalds, we have a new story-line: The doll formerly known as Princessa (and who was evil) is no longer evil and goes by the name “Lily”. She is now the mother of the former Doll Who Had No Name - who is now named Princessa. And Princessa (formerly she of no name)is now the mother of the purple fairy Barbie - who is now also named Princessa (but who is known to everyone as Katie). Princessa/Katie has turned all of the other Barbies into fairies in order for them to assist her in her battle against an evil monster that is ravaging all of fairy-kind. So the other Barbies now have wings, albeit invisible ones.

I hope that is all perfectly clear.

Ken’s wings periodically vanish (which is pretty good, considering that they were invisible to begin with) while he’s in flight. Because it’s really funny when he crashes into the ground, and apparently fairies just have that kind of sense of humor.

Barbie

2011-03-02T15:28:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago, I spent half an hour playing Barbies with my daughter by phone.

Let me say that again: Barbies. By phone.

I’m not a Barbie aficionado. Firstly, because I’m a guy. When I was little, boy Barbies (otherwise known as “Action Figures” to avoid damaging the Fragile Male Ego^©) hadn’t been invented. I had army men – the ubiquitous little plastic soldiers that came in bags of about 17,000 and which were the bane of barefoot adults everywhere. We dug battle trenches in the flowers beds (much to my Father’s dismay) and laid each side out in battle formation. These were the non-enlightened days before the Parent’s Council had taught us that violent games in childhood make for violent adults. So we all had pistols, automatic weapons, grenades (which fired caps), and large rubber combat knives which we gleefully used to slash one another’s throats. The really violent stuff we reserved for the plastic troops. A plastic army man’s life expectancy made that of his live counterpart on D-Day looks long by comparison. We threw them, burned them, pelted them with dirt clods (which made a satisfyingly realistic puff on impact, and were also dug out of my Dad’s flower beds) and occasionally, positioned them around firecrackers to simulate the effects of landmines.

Toy soldiers were to be played with. I had no idea what the hell Barbies were for. My cousin Marci had several Barbies and I only ever saw her dragging them around by one leg as though she had just returned from the hunt. I was nearly ten before I realized that they didn’t come from the store naked and decapitated.

Later, I was taught that Barbie was an evil instrument of our male-dominated corporate overlords, designed to indoctrinate little girls into being decorative little consumers. As such I was determined to protect my daughter from them. I still hold to those views. And we have managed to protect our daughter from many of the worst excesses of unthinking consumerist greed. But I fought the Barbie – and I lost.

Moiya’s Mom got her a Barbie and the world didn’t end, nor did the advertising council climb through the bedroom window, so I unbent a bit and got her one. Actually, I got her two. They were part of a package set, and not made by Mattell. So technically they weren’t Barbie’s at all, but rather Barbie-sized. This was my first approach to the Barbie Learning Curve^®

Barbie knock-offs aren’t constructed like real Barbies and are often easier to dismember than the Mattel product.

Little girls often bend doll arms with the same gentle loving concern as a linebacker and don’t really care which way the joint is *supposed* to bend.

At first, I tried to explain to Moiya that her Barbie really wasn’t meant to have it’s arms twisted behind it’s back at an angle that would make Dr. Mengele wince. I received a blank stare. So I got really, really good at reattaching doll arms.

(Bonus: once the arms have been ripped off, Barbie is about 1000% easier to wedge into her tiny, tiny clothes.)

There is no consistent construction for real Barbies either.
Parts that are made to bend on some Barbies don't bend on others. Get used to reattaching things.

Never ever hold a Barbie by the legs which brushing the hair.
I used amuse msyself during interminable Barbie sessions by brushing the doll's hair. It at least something I could wrap my male brain around. And Barbie hair is fashioned from a type of fiber specifically formulated to to turn into rope unless brushed regularly. I discovered that the easiest way to get at the hair for brushing is to hold Barbie up by her ankles and brush straight down.

I also discovered that this will rip her head clean off.

Barbie heads don’t reattached the same way as Barbie arms.

No matter what you do with Barbie, no matter how carefully you follow the instructions given you by your little tyrant, you will be instructed that you are “doing it wrong.”

Barbies, apparently, can fly.
(I mentioned this oddity to adult females of my acquaintance and they uniformly responded with “Well, of course” in the pitying tone women reserve for egregious examples of male stupidity)

Lifting up Barbie’s skirt and commenting on the pebbly, embossed surface meant to resemble panties by referring to her loudly and repeatedly as “Lumpy Butt” will get you in trouble.

Our two faux Barbies, Stella and Cupcake (I named one and Moiya named the other. Can you tell which is which?) were soon joined by a genuine Barbie named Princessa and then, at my daughter’s request, by a “Fashionista Ken.” I tried to push for the Ken to be named Prince Edwardo and used to make him talk like Ricardo Montoban, but was overruled. So I made him stand outside the dollhouse and call “STELLAAAAAAAH!”in my best Marlon Brando voice instead, which amused me greatly. But I was overruled on that as well.

I now amuse myself by making Ken talk like a surfer dude and fuss incessantly about the state of his hair. (We all take our pleasures where we can.)

Stella, Cupcake, Ken/Eduardo, Princessa and a Christmas addition who is – as yet – nameless, live in a three-story dollhouse in one corner of Moiya’s bedroom. Their private life varies from the mundane, to the bizarre, to the surreal. Ken/Eduardo is married to both Stella and Cupcake. (Cupcake is also his sister - the genealogy of Stella remains unknown). Princessa has occasionally tried to put the moves on Ken/Eduardo, but as she is EVIL and he is GOOD Ken is able to resist her charms. Ken, Stella, and sisterwife Cupcake live with an assortment of Littlest Pet Shop figurines for whom they serve as guardians/teachers. (At one time a rather elaborate schoolhouse was constructed out of building blocks, but it eventually has to be removed so that Daddy could vacuum.)

Recently Cupcake gave birth to ten or twelve tiny yellow plastic kangaroos as well. Primarily they move around the dollhouse house in a pack, watching people. I don’t know where Moiya got them and I’m sure as hell not going to inquire too closely into their family relationships. Singly they're cute. In a pack, they give me the heebie-jeebies.

The only person definitely identified as the offspring of Ken and Cupcake (despite being the senior wife, Stella doesn’t appear to have conjugal rights) is a tiny toy figure of uncertain origin, possibly a Happy Meal Barbie clone who has long since lost her clothing and who wears only the diaper that was painted onto her body. Named Summer, she began life as a good child, but has recently gone over to the dark side. She’s mean, surly, and is possessed of magic powers. Personally, I think that she’s Ken and Princessa's’s love child. But I keep such opinions to myself.

The other residents of the Barbie house are an assortment of figures gleaned from various sources over the years: a Little Boy Blue, two Princesses, a Mad Hatter, and one mermaid who lives in the family bathtub. The cast will swell as the ongoing narrative demands, to occasionally include several My Little Ponies (who trade off transport duties with a cardboard Pontiac gleaned from Steak and Shake two years ago. The ponies can fly. The car, not so much) and even one of Moiya's life-sized baby dolls (who, being much too large to actually fit in the Barbie house, is appropriately named “Giant Baby”)

On the 2nd floor, Ken is telling bed time stories to the little dudes, accompanied by the faithful Pig (on the piano), Stella (at right) and The Unnamed One (holding Summer in a rare well-behaved moment)

Ken seems to be the paterfamilias of the group and primary caregiver to the children, though his women lead him a dog’s life with their constant quarreling. His one source of solace is his pet pig (named “Pig”) that follows him wherever he goes. (All of which could explain why Ken sometimes gets moody and wanders off across the bedroom floor, accompanied by Pig). One particularly grim story line saw Princessa abducting Pig and killing him, presumably in a fit of pique over an unsuccessful overture to Ken. Ken was inconsolable until Stella was able to bring Pig back to life through methods that remain a bit vague.

By and large, Daddy discourages story lines that wander into the violent. Granted, someone is always being mean to someone else in a household as large as this one. Hitting happens, but shooting is not allowed. Malefactors are given a stern talking to by Ken (to whom they are all “Little Dude”). Continued failure to observe the rules of polite behavior result in the perpetrator being sent to time out by being shut up in the nearby toy oven (Daddy decided that 6 was not the right age to mention unfortunate historical overtones). Good children get to go and play in the playground built beside the house out of toy remnants and various odds and ends.

When the Barbies are not quarreling, dressing, or making Ken’s life a living plastic hell, they generally hold class for the assorted children. Recently this has tended to involve actual teaching. In an obvious reflection of real life, when Moiya was in kindergarten the Barbies spent most of their time shepherding the children to and from the upper floors of the house to the bathroom on the first floor. They had to go in shifts, and it was not permitted to take any shortcuts. Barbies can fly, but the other plastic people cannot, and they had to be carefully lined up (girls in one line, boys in the other) and then each toy was individually walked down the stairs from the third floor to the second. A second line would then form outside the elevator which connects the second floor to the first. No one could go down the elevator until everyone had made it down the stairs first. And no one could actually go to the toilet until everyone had made it down the elevator and had lined up again outside the bathroom.

And once everyone had gone, the entire procedure had to be repeated again to get them all upstairs again. I usually took about twenty minutes from start to finish.

I hate bathroom breaks. So does Ken.

There are very few good things about having to spend part of each week away from one's child. But I had assumed one of them at least was not having to play Barbies. I say this in the full knowledge that in a few years when Moiya has gotten older and no longer wants to play with me, that I will look back on this time with a palpable longing. Nevertheless, I thought a household with just me and the cat unlikely to be visited by Cupcake and friends. So I was taken aback when, during my call to tell Moiya goodnight, she wanted to play Barbies with me.

“But,Umm.. but… I’m here and you’re there.”
“That’s okay.. go get Ken!’
“But..”
“Go get Ken.”
“But..”
“Daddy! Go get Ken!”

Daddy didn’t really go upstairs to get Ken, but made appropriate stair-climbing noises and declared Ken present.

“Oh no! Help me Ken!”
“Um.. who is this?”
“This is Abigail!”
“…?”
“I’m Cupcake’s sissy! You have to help us! Me and my five sisters!”
“Um.. Oh.. okay (ahem) Dude! It’s Ken! Wasshappenin’ lil’ dudes?”
“It’s evil Ken! He’s here and he’s being mean to my sisters!”
“Well dude, that’s bogus! Like.. call the police.”
“We did, but they aren’t here yet! We need to come over there!”
“Well, get in the car and drive over!
“We can’t! Only Cynthia is old enough to drive.”
“Well..”
“But evil Ken hit her with a hammer and it tore her leg off! You’ll have to send the horses”
“Horses?”
(gruff voice) “HELLO!”
“Um.. who is this?”
“THIS IS EVIL KEN. YOU BETTER NOT BE TALKING ABOUT ME!”
“Um.. no way dude!”
“Send the horses!”
"Ken?"
"No!"
“Is this Abigail?”
“No, this is Cynthia.”
“Oh. Sorry to hear about your leg, dude.”
“Oh, my sissy put a bandage on it and I’m all better. But there’s too much snow for us to drive. And we all won’t fit in the car. Send the horses, Orange Blossom and Silky Mane!”

And so it went. For three days. Evil Ken went to jail. He escaped from jail to threaten Good Ken. He went back to jail again. We all rode our valiant horses to safety through the ice and snow. And nobody had to go to the bathroom.

I need to learn how you fix a Barbie leg with a band-aid though..

Moiya Moment

2011-02-24T08:42:00.000-08:00

On the way to school last week, Moiya described something as being so silent that "it was as quiet as a truck!"

I pointed out that trucks aren't very quiet.

Moiya replied "I meant a truck that isn't doing anything."

Which pretty well shut me up.

Feeling Better

2011-01-25T09:09:00.000-08:00

I'm back to work. My long unemployment can be the topic for another post (maybe). But I'm back to work. The advantage to being back at work is that eventually you get medical insurance. So for the first time in over a year I can actually go and see a doctor. The bad thing about being back at work is that when I get sick I can't actually take a day off to go and see a doctor. So as I have for the past year, I try to stave everything off with lots of vitamins and copious amounts of hand sanitizer (or "hanitizer" as Moiya would have it).

Right now I'm feeling a little ragged as I'm fighting one of my periodic sinus/upper respiratory infections. I'm not incapacitated. I just look and feel a little like something that shouldn't be allowed into the living room. Moiya has been, for the most part, very sweet and solicitous of her mangy Dad. (although she found that actually watching Daddy flush salt water through his sinuses was a little too gross even for a girl whose favorite topic for humor is dirty underwear).

On days when I pack Moiya's lunch, I always write/draw her a little note on a paper napkin, as my mother did for me when I was the same age. Today when I was packing my lunch, I found a note, written/drawn on a paper napkin from Moiya displaying a drawing of us holding hands and the legend "I LOVE YOU". When I asked why she put it in my lunch she said "So when you're not feeling good today, Daddy, you can look at it and it will make you feel better."

She got a big hug. The note is currently taped to the monitor in my office. And damned if I don't feel better each and every time I look at it.

I have such a cool kid

Homework Assignment:

2010-10-13T07:39:00.000-07:00

Write a sentence that describes your favorite part of your family.

(helping) "Okay sweetie. What's your favorite part of your family?"

"Mommy"

(pause) "Okay. Um.. Is that your only favorite part?"

"Of course not!"

"Okay then, what else is your favorite part besides Mommy?"

"My kitty."

"..."

Toy Story

2010-09-28T14:31:00.001-07:00

There’s a lesson here somewhere:

Cost of Latest Toy from Wal-Mart (hula hoop):
$7.98

Duration of Interest:
20 minutes

Cost of Political Flyers Delivered To the House and Rolled Up To Make “Swords”:
$0.00

Duration of Interest:
Three months and counting.

Mr. Stinkey

2010-09-28T14:30:00.000-07:00

Problem: Fussy, drama-queen child throwing fits over anything and everything.

Solution: Pulling a smelly, lint-covered sock out from the laundry, making it into a hand-puppet named “Mr. Stinky” and having said puppet chase the aforementioned child screaming through the house whilst pleading with her in a bad French accent “Aw, c’mon babee! Gimme leetle kees! Muah! Muah!”

Changes

2010-09-28T13:59:00.001-07:00

“To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.”

It’s been a long time since I’ve written in this journal, and life has, as life is wont to do, changed out of all recognition. Some of the changes have been expected as a healthy if bittersweet byproduct of Moiya’s growth. Some, like John Lennon’s definition of life, were what happened while I was busy making other plans.

In the latter category pride of place goes to my acceptance into the ranks of the unemployed as the company I had given ten years of my life to “downsized.” I’ve been out of work (full-time work anyway) for 14 months at this point – long enough to wipe out what savings I had and to have taught me that while I was working the HR departments of most corporations were taken over by twenty-somethings who view me at 57 as an alien (anD pointless) species.

But this blog isn’t about me, but about my daughter.

We made it through kindergarten, though not without scars. After punishing Moiya relentlessly for her supposed inability to behave in school, we got to comparing notes with other parents (and observed enough ourselves) to realize that whatever our daughter’s shortcomings, her teacher was an awful harridan of a woman who should not have been left in the care of a cage of gerbils, much less a roomful of children. We are not the sort of parents who blame the school for our child’s misbehavior, and we try hard to always be supportive of Moiya’s teachers. But this was out of control and attempts to resolve to situation were futile. So we were left with no alternative but to meet with the principal. After that things got better. After that, school was out for the summer.

But the damage had been done. Moiya went from a child who loved books and was deeply proud of her growing skill with words and numbers, to child who wanted nothing to do with books or reading and bitterly resented library trips and story time.

I’m happy to report that we are slowly coming out of that phase. She has a good teacher now (a saga for another day). I’ve made flash cards of words this summer and Moiya has gone from having to be made to run the drill to asking to do it. This is partly because of the mini-M&Ms she can win for success, and – increasingly – due to her delight at the 100+ words she can now recognize on sight. And I no longer have to drag her to the library. But I’m no longer allowed to pick her books. I have to wait in the grown-up section while she trundles upstairs to the children’s library, picks put her book with no input from Daddy, and checks them out by herself with her own card. All of which tickles me.

***************
We have big girl beds now in both houses and the Troubles at bedtime have completely disappeared. I still sit with Moiya and hold her hand while she falls asleep. Modern child psychologists frown on this. But modern child-psychologists can bite my hairy little white tuchas. As her mother has pointed out Moiya gets herself to sleep at her house, so we know she can do it. And that precious period as the day unwinds into sleep is when my child lets down her guard and we have our best talks. I wouldn’t give those up for the world – not at least till Moiya wants me to. I still smile about the night we were discussing God and she wanted to know “Can God see me when I poop?”

***************
Other changes tug at my heartstrings. We not longer have to wait before every car trip while Moiya selects which of her stuffed “buddies” are to ride with her and gets blankets ready to keep them warm. When I noticed this, I asked her about it.
Moiya just shrugged and said “Well, I’m older now, Daddy”

Just… Ouch.

I thought the same fate had befallen the broad collection of personalities that Moiya used to talk to in the car. She went through a spell of wanting to listen to music in the car on the old mp3 player I gave her and I thought Mr. Sun et al were gone for good.

However I’m happy to report that most if not all have returned again. Moiya has taken to reading stories to them on the return trip from the library. And on the longer trip to and from school she has devised a sort of competition for them in which she arranges them into teams and quizzes them on the stories she’s read and keeps score in a notebook she carries with her. Last week Mr. Sun, his daughter Sunny, and Mr. Cold were in completion over questions from “Goodnight Gorilla.” The week before, Good Gorilla was competing with Pirate Dog and our cat, Simon (who can apparently travel out-of-body).

Moiya: “Sunny, which animal does the zoo keeper say goodnight to first?”
Sunny: “The Gorilla.”
Moiya: “Good, Sunny. You get a point. Now Mr. Sun, who is the next animal that the zoo keeper says goodnight to?”
Mr. Sun: “Hmmm.. that would be… the penguin!”
Moiya: “No, that’s not right. No point for you.”
Mr. Sun: “The spiny anteater?”
Sunny: “Daddy! You only get one guess!”
Moiya: “That’s right. Sit down Mr. Sun. Mr. Cold?”
Mr. Cold: “Yeass,, that is meee, MISTER COLD. You need me to make anything cold for you?”
Moiya: “Stop it, Mr. Cold or you’re out of the game.”
Mr. Cold: “Okay. I can do that.”
Moiya: “Now Mr. Cold, what is the animal the zookeeper say goodnight to after the gorilla?”
Mr. Cold: “The lion.”
Moiya: “Good! You get a point.”

And so it goes. Driving is never dull. Confusing, but never dull.

***************

And we’ve lost teeth. We’ve swallowed them. We’ve tugged them out ourselves. And we are astonished at the prescience of adults that loook at our gap-toothed smile and ask “Are you six?” The last tooth out was one that Moiya had been fiddling with while we were watching an American Girl movie (“Molly: An American Girl on the Home Front”) and had gotten so loose that it was hanging cockeyed in her jaw but was still firmly attached by a strip of flesh.
“Well baby, it’s bed time. Leave it be and it will probably come out tomorrow.”
“We can’t do that Daddy! It will fall out in my throat while I’m asleep and I’ll CHOKE on it AND I WILL DIE!!!!!”

(For those of you with boys, it is worth pointing out that with girls, Drama™ is your constant companion. High drama. Mexican soap opera drama. About anything. Nothing is too small or insignificant to provoke Drama™. In fact contrary to reason, the more small and insignificant something is, the more it is likely to result in Drama™)

“Well, than I’ll have to pull it out.”
“NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!”
“Okay, YOU pull it out.”

This does not succeed. She can’t get hold of it. Daddy can’t get hold of it. Moiya finally submits to daddy’s needle-nosed pliers, but the tooth is too tiny to gain purchase. We have no dental floss (my bad) so I try thread – which breaks.

The hours drag on and Daddy and daughter get increasingly frustrated and tired until Daddy decides to make dental floss. I dig out a spool of nylon twine, unravel some and wax it with an old candle. VOILA! Dental floss.

We secure it around Moiya’s tooth with a slip knot and I tell her I’m going to pull it on three.

“Ready? Okay... One...” YANK!

And Moiya is left looking very surprised, minus one more tooth. We stanch the blood. We go to bed.

And in the night, the tooth fairy comes. For the moment at least, that remains unchanged.

Valemtimes Day

2010-09-28T13:55:00.000-07:00

Moiya discovered April Fools this year for the first time and loves it - just as she loves jumping out of hiding each and every time I come into the room and “scaring” me, oblivious to the fact that I can hear her giggling from a mile away.

Unfortunately, for some reason she has it in confused in her head with Valentine's Day and I’ve pretty much given up trying to correct her.

When I called last night to tell Moiya goodnight (her Mom and I are adamant about doing this, no matter which parent she is with) I asked her how her day had been. I do this out of habit and sense of parental duty only, since Moiya doesn't ever actually tell me anything beyond “fine”. This time however I received a big sigh in response. ‘My day was bad, Daddy.” Usually “bad” mean bad deportment marks in school. We try for green. Yellow is more common. Red is not allowed.

“Why was your day bad, sweetie?”

(silence)

“Moiya, what did you get at school?”

A very small voice replied “I got a red, Daddy”

“What!? Why? What were you doing?? Moiya, you Mother and I cannot..”

(Wild giggles) “HAPPY VALEMTIMES DAY!”

“Oh ho-ho! Well you certainly got me that time. What did you really get?”

“I got a yellow.”

“Well, that’s better than a red. But it’s still not good, Moiya. What are we going to have to..”

“HAPPY VALEMTIMES DAY!”

We got green. So far as I know. At lest I finally persuaded her that “Happy Valemtimes Day” was not going to get her out of trouble for telling me that the apartment was on fire.

Damn Hallmark.

Stella

2010-05-30T19:23:00.000-07:00

Ok.. so I gave my daughter the "boy Barbie" she asked for for her birthday. Now mere days later Ken (aka "Prince Edwardo") has married both Stella and Cupcake (the girl Barbies), one of whom (Cupcake) is his sister. I feel like I've fallen into an episode of Jerry Springer.

(Bonus - I did get to make Ken stand outside the dollhouse and call "Stellaaaaaa" in my best Marlon Brando voice)

Dandelions

2010-04-21T16:28:00.000-07:00

On my way back from visiting my Mom I detoured for a little while to pay my respects at Dad's grave. I gave Moiya the choice to stay in the car or come with me and she chose to come. So hand in hand we trudged up the ramp-like walkway that leads to Dad's plot.

This was Moiya’s second visit since infancy and she's lost some of her overt fascination with death. (She no longer argues to dig Dad up and have a look at him anyway). But as with all of us, there's a mystique about death. After I paid my respects Moiya wanted to explore so we walked the rest of the way up the hill to the old section. Compared to the little plaques Moiya was used to, the big Victorian monuments were pretty exotic and we ambled happily for a while with her admiring the statuary and Daddy interested in the dates.

Eventually even statuary lost its fascination and Moiya wandered off to pick dandelions. We pick lots of dandelions at home. We picked dandelions at every single rest stop on the way to St. Louis so we could give Nonny something pretty for her apartment. Back at our place, the kitchen windowsill is covered with small containers of water in which dandelions are undergoing the mysterious transformation into puffballs, which we then disperse on the winds across the complex. The groundskeepers hate us.

And so we passed the time quietly with Daddy pondering stones and Moiya picking flowers. It was pleasant -especially as it's a rare thing for Moiya to be quiet for an extended period. Moiya gets better marks in school now that the Evil Kindergarten Teacher has gone on leave. But she still does poorly in deportment because she can't keep her mouth shut. I asked one day in exasperation if everybody else got in trouble for talking. Moiya admitted that they did not. I asked if that meant that everyone else was able to keep quiet and Moiya admitted that it did. “And why” I said “can everybody manage to stop talking except you?”

Moiya pondered for a moment and then offered “Because I have more thoughts than anybody else.”

Well alrighty then. I couldn't really argue with that, although I did manage not to laugh. Laughing tends to limit the efficacy of Daddy's Stern Warnings ™

Eventually we went back down the hill to begin the long drive home. And I noticed that while my attention had been elsewhere, somebody had placed a handful of freshly-picked bright yellow flowers atop dad's grave.

More thoughts indeed.

Serious Business

2010-01-05T10:39:00.000-08:00

I got to fretting about being unemployed while we were playing Candy Land last Sunday and Moiya stopped, fixed me with her most serious look and said "Daddy, you can worry about that some other time. Our business is to play."

What Love Looks Like

2009-12-25T11:08:00.000-08:00

In case you were wondering, this is what love looks like.

If you are painting your daughter’s nails and she asks if she can paint yours, what can you say? That you’re afraid? That your manhood is too insecure?

Pfft! No! You damned well let her paint them. And you let her take a picture. Because that, my friends, is true love.

(And then you bloody well sneak into the bathroom quietly remove it when she isn’t looking)

Pax Moiyana

2009-12-25T10:35:00.001-08:00

So many firsts in the past several months: Moiya moved into “big kid school” for the first time, we lost our first tooth (first two, actually), and we got our first adult tooth – of which we are very proud.

And somewhere along the way, The Troubles that I’ve written about elsewhere in this blog – the great screaming rages in response to the upheavals in her young life – seem to have ended almost as suddenly as they began two years ago.

There are still isolated events; the night before Moiya transitions from one household to another she will usually push and push and push until we finally have to come down hard on her (because, I suppose, she can then get mad at us – and mad is a much easier emotion to process). But these flare-ups compare to The Troubles in much the same way that a firecracker compares to a propane tank explosion.

Astonishingly, the thing that seems to have started the process was a simple, wind-up kitchen timer from Wal-Mart.

I got tired of the constant fighting with Moiya over when we had to stop playing, when she had to get out of the tub, when it was time to stop reading and get into bed, etc. So I went out and bought a timer and set it for 30 minutes. “When that dings” I said “We’re done.” It’s very old-school, makes a nice tick-tock noise, and has a real bell (rather than some damned electronic beep).

And it worked. From the very first time.

Moiya likes that she can see how much time she has left, and immediately started asking if she could set the timer herself. It isn’t cut and dried: If Moiya’s been bad at school, she loses five minutes off the 30. If Mommy calls, I stop the clock till they’re done talking. But it’s dead simple and for whatever reason, it works. Hell, at this point if I forget to set the timer, Moiya reminds me. And all for under two dollars.

We’ve also made accommodations in bedding. One night Moiya asked if she could just sleep on the floor. I agreed, thinking it would eventually turn into another ploy to start a screaming row. So we prepared the little foam Winnie the Pooh sofa that sits on the floor next to her bed. We arranged her pillow (with newly purchased Disney Princess pillowcase) and cover the couch with her new Disney Princess blanket (softest side up, princesses facing out, edges tucked under). And lastly I covered Moiya with the blue blanket we borrowed from her Nonny (which also had to face correctly, though it has no discernable pattern) tucked securely under her feet at the end – with her Disney Princess swim towel over her toes.

With her thus bedded, I lay on the floor next to her, holding hands and playing rhyming word games in the dark till she got sleepy.

Then she went to sleep.

Just like that. No psychotic rages. No screaming. No kicking and throwing. She just went to sleep. And she did it again the next night. And the next.

And so The Troubles passed and a period of relative calm has begun. It isn’t absolute. There were two weekends in November when she decided to conduct a five-year-old’s version of a scorched earth campaign. Contrary to her Mom’s belief that Moiya would soon come to think of her two homes as “natural”, she has not. “I remember our old house Daddy,” she said one day with a glare. “I remember us together. I remember everything.”

And for better or worse, I’m the one who’s going to be the outlet for her sadness. Moiya even told her Mom one day that she was mad at her so she beat up on me. Go figure. (And bless her Mom for telling me.. it helps somehow).

But it isn’t every day like it used to be. And for that I am profoundly grateful.

Desk Love

2009-12-24T18:23:00.000-08:00

As I’ve posted before, I’ve had to learn that expressions of love often come in curious disguises. I got Moiya a little desk for Christmas a few years back, and to my enormous gratification, she uses it constantly. It can stand as an easel or lay flat as a desk and when she isn’t coloring on it she’s using the whiteboard surface to practice her letters. It has it’s own little three-legged stool and I put it in a nice, uncluttered corner of her room.

But over time, I found that Moiya’s desk tended to migrate to my room. I’d get up in the night, trip over it, and move it back to her room. I’d try to vacuum (the litter box is in my room – I have to vacuum often) and it would be in my way until I moved it back to her room. More than once I’ve crashed into it whilst carrying a full basket of laundry and bellowed (from the floor) for my daughter to get her !@!#! desk and put it in her room.

“Why” I would ask in exasperation “is it always in MY room?”

And then I noticed that it wasn’t just in my room. It was next to the desk in my room. Next to the old roll-top desk which had been my Dad’s and where I do most of my work. Next to the desk at which I am presently writing this. Moiya was placing her desk next to my desk, and her chair next to my chair.

And when we sit at our respective desks, we sit together, side by side.

And so that has become the official spot for Moiya’s desk. When I check my email or am sending out job applications, she sits next to me and draws or practices her letters. Sometimes we chat while we work. It's nice.

I can’t imagine how I ever thought it was in the way.

Minutiae

2009-12-24T18:17:00.000-08:00

As we looked at a book on the Nativity, Moiya began telling me the story of Baby Jesus and His mama, Maryhadalittlelamb.

Moiya retrieves the quarter deposit when we return our cart at the local grocery (some of the locals do this as a stop loss measure). One day when she got in the car I asked for my quarter back, but was told that she was busy with her seatbelt. After her belt was fastened, I asked for my quarter again, and was met with another excuse.. and another... and another.

Finally I told my daughter that if I didn’t get my quarter back, we weren’t going anywhere. Moiya handed me my quarter, put her hands on her hips and demanded “What sort of man ARE you?” I have no idea where that came from, but it cracked me up. So it turns up with some frequency now as her shorthand token of humorous disgust.

Moiya frequently, with the mangled logic of the young, refers to her habits as “Like I always do sometimes.”

Magicadabra

2009-12-24T18:02:00.000-08:00

"Magicadabra" is our magic word.

Moiya used to bring me her child-proof bottle of children's vitamins after having failed to open them herself. I would wave my hands, mutter, tap the lid three times and say "ABRACADABRA!" Then I'd open the bottle with a flourish.

It took Moiya's awhile to figure out the trick, but eventually she came to me, proud as punch and after suitable theatrics, announced "MAGICADABRA!" and opened the bottle. We try magic card tricks as well, though I've never been good at them, with or without Magicadabra. And recently, my con artist daughter has begun trying to convince her old Dad that she has psychic powers.

“Daddy?”

“Uh-huh?”

“I can read your mind!”

We were whipping down the highway on the way back from a day of kindergarten for Moiya and fruitless job searching for me. I was not entirely living in the moment, having my mind on “serious matters”

“Ok,” I said with a sigh. “I’m thinking of a number between 1 and 10. If you can read my mind, tell me what number I’m thinking of.”

“Ok,” said Moiya. “Are you thinking real hard?” I assured her that I was and she screwed up her little face in concentration.

“Is it two?”

“No”

(pause) “Is it seven?”

“No.”

“Is it three?”

“Nope” I said, trying not to laugh.

“Is it one?”

“No.” By now we’re both giggling.”

“Is it six?”

“Oh! Let me think. Hmmmmm.. No.”

“Eight?”

“No”

“Nine?”

“No.”

“Four?”

“Yes, it’s four.”

“AHA!!” Moiya shouted. “I TOLD YOU I COULD READ YOUR MIND!!”
And we both fell about laughing.

I love my kid.

Silent Night

2009-12-24T17:54:00.000-08:00

I don’t mind sharing Moiya. My ex and I try to be considerate of one another and of Moiya and I’m thankful to have that in a co-parent. If we can’t give Moiya an unbroken home we can certainly give her a life without friction between the people who love her. A girl needs her Mama, and I don’t begrudge a second of the time Moiya spends there.

But it does get creepy quiet around here, after the giggles and the jumping and the running have gone.

The thing that gets to me most are Moiya’s “babies’, scattered here and there throughout every room in the apartment, all carefully and lovingly tucked in and waiting silently for their little Momma to return. It’s a constant reminder of what’s missing. I should put the bloody things away. But somehow I just don’t have the heart to move them.

Holidays are the worst. I’ve surrendered my claim on holidays in my daughter’s interest. Holidays are about family. Moiya’s Mom has lots of family and mostly nearby. I have very little, and all far away. So holidays are spent with Mommy’s family where - as it should be - there is noise and life and lots of little cousins to play with.

But it’s... odd... here, especially now at Christmas. It’s been three years since I got to see my daughter’s anticipation of the arrival of Santa on Christmas Eve night. And I miss that. And the knowledge that I’m unlikely to see it again stings.

Okay. Enough self pity. I think I’ll go to bed now. Tomorrow is another day.

The Return of the Flying Mermaid

2009-12-24T17:32:00.000-08:00

I apologize to the simply tens of… tens… of people who read this blog for not having posted in such a long time. Life got a little interesting.

Years of poor management left my employer more or less defunct and me out of a job. (It’s simply bundles of fun, looking for work at 56 years of age in the middle of a massive recession when all the HR people consider you washed up at 30). And Moiya started school - which was almost certainly more stressful on her Mother and I than it was on her. The long and the short of it is that I fell behind.

But as I always do, I jotted the occasional text note to myself as things occurred and now that I’m back I’ll use them to gradually fill in the blanks. (At least I will for those notes whose meaning I can devine. A few of them I have no idea what I meant). Thus chronology for the next several posts will have little of no actual bearing on when the events occurred. “Sometime between August and December 2009” will just have to do.

On The Inexplicable Humor Of Children

2009-08-09T12:25:00.000-07:00

“I love you, Daddy”
"I love you too, sweetheart.”
“You know how much I love you?”
“How much?”
“I love you more than a rock and a piece of soap.”
(much childish laughter)

Okay. Truth to tell, I thought it was just as funny as she did. Not sure why.. it just was. Of course a few days ago, I told her I loved her as much as a rock and a piece of soap and she gave me a look which said “Old man, you have lost your damned mind.” So it goes.

Songs

2009-08-09T12:20:00.000-07:00

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress
~Yeats~

I record these things not because I think anyone will be particularly interested, but because I don’t want to forget. Moiya changes so swiftly and already, looking over these entries, I’m finding little behaviors that are long gone and which I had almost forgotten. Moiya no longer sits (or lays) on the kitchen and watches while I make dinner. She no longer has me collect “coffee crumbs” so she can “cook” with them (though I still do. I’m very trainable). And she no longer wants to shave with me in the mornings. Change is the way of life, I know. And I accept that I have to constantly be saying goodbye to the faces she leaves behind. But I don’t have to forget any of them. Not unless I want to. And I don’t.

We do still talk to imaginary people on our car rides, though the preferred cast keeps changing. Handy and Fred are seldom seen, except to translate for Duck. Pirate Dog only gets the occasional look-in. Though Mr. Sun remains a primary character. And Simon (cat) and Wicker (dog), both of whom are real still get a lot of play. There are new folks now: During the winter months, we created Mr. Cold (who sounds like a nasally Lawrence Welk) who is responsible for the change in the weather and who thinks everything can be made better by lowering its temperature. “Hellooo!” he will say “Ah am MEESTER COLD! You need me to make sometheeng cooold for you? Ah can do that because.. ah am MEESTER COLD!” For a longtime, the game was to trick Mr. Cold into saying the word “warm”, which cause him great distress. That was good for miles and miles of travel time, but has pretty much faded now.

And there’s Good Gorilla and Bad Gorilla. Good Gorilla was born when we went past a billboard for the Louisville Zoo. The series of ads featured animals Photoshopped segueing into other animals. This particular billboard featured a gorilla with the hindquarters of a zebra. “Look Moiya,” I said. “That gorilla has a zebra butt!” At which point Moiya began talking to the gorilla.

I’m still quite proud of my gorilla voice. I’m constantly having to invent new voices out of the blue whilst travelling at 65 mph, and after awhile, I run out of ideas. But I nailed the gorilla. Stick your lower jaw as far forward as you can manage and try to impersonate Winston Churchill, and you’ve about got it.

So for months afterwards, till the zoo changed its ad campaign and the billboards came down, we had our daily conversation with Mr. Gorilla, which consisted mostly of Moiya asking him if he knew he had a zebra butt, and Mr. Gorilla expressing various levels of shock, outrage and surprise. Fortunately Moiya always had a spare gorilla butt she could lend, for which Mr. gorilla was abjectly grateful. Occasionally, there would be conversations about where he slept and what he ate, but mostly it was an endless series of different animals who kept sneaking in and swapping their hindquarters with Mr. Gorilla (occasionally with unfortunate consequences. A gorilla front and a snake rear was not a happy pairing). Then somewhere along the way we acquired Bad Gorilla. I’m not sure where or how. Suddenly he just sprang into being. His shtick is (of course) that he doesn’t like anything good, only really revolting things. I’m not that wild about Bad Gorilla, but Moiya seems to prefer him.

My car’s CD player died some years back. Then the radio went as well, and I can’t afford to have either one fixed or repaired. I’ve missed their loss greatly, as one of my real pleasures after our home broke up was driving around with Moiya (around three), looking for cows and listening to music. And I especially miss it now, as Moiya has suddenly gotten very interested in music. I managed to put together a collection of her favorite songs from our Disney movies and burned them to a CD which she plays (and dances to) all hours of the day. Then I had the happy idea of digging out an old, outmoded MP3 player, refurbished it, and loaded her music onto it along with anything else from my collection she fancied.

It’s an odd mix, as besides the Disney stuff we have the Beatles, Queen, and Gilbert and Sullivan. And since in the car Moiya can’t dance to it, she sings instead. So some mornings I would drive to work listening to fairly recognizable warblings of “What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor” and “With a Little Help From My Friends” coming from the back seat. As with the dancing, it wasn’t long before Moiya required an audience for her singing. And so our morning drive sounds something like this:

“Mr. Sun?”
“Good Morning, Moiya!”
“Would you like to hear me sing?”
“Oh, I always love to hear you sing!”
“Ok.. .sit down. Luna?”
“Hello Moiya!”
“Would you like to hear me sing?”
“Moiya, I would love it.”
“Ok. Sit down next to Mr. Sun. Duck?”
“Quack!”
“Would you like to hear me sing?”
“Quack!”
“What did he say, puppet?”
“He say ‘Oh yeah, that’s be verra nice.”
“Ok. You two can sit next to Luna. Wicker Dog?”
“Woof!”
“Do you want to hear me sing?”
“Rrr.. do I get a treat?”
“Yes.”
“Rrr.. okay.”
“Ok. You can sit down next to Puppet. Mr Cold?”
“Yeasss. That is mee. MR. COL..”
“Do you want to hear me sing?”
“Um. You know any cold songs?”
“Yes. Sit down next to Wicker dog. Bad Gorilla?”
“Hmmmyeas?”
“Do you want to hear me sing?”
“Do you sing badly? I only like bad songs.”
“Well, I’m going to sing good songs. But maybe I’ll sing a bad one later.”
“Hmmmokay”
“Sit down next to Mr. Cold. Pirate Dog?”
“ARR MATEY!”
“Do you want to hear me sing?”
ARR. ALL US PIRATES LOVE TA HEAR SINGIN’ WE DOES!”
“Okay, sit down next to Bad Gorilla. Bunny”
“Yeth?”
“Do you want to hear me sing?”
“Do you know a..”
“No, I don’t know any songs about carrots. But they’ll be nice songs.”
“That would be thplendid!”

And so on. Sometimes we have Baby Sun and Mrs. Sun. Sometimes we have Mama Rabbit. Sometimes we have James Bear and Soft Bear. Recently it has included our cat, Simon. The list varies. But it is important to ask everyone she can think of and get them all properly seated and ready. Then the actual singing can begin.

I love this part of my life, and I’m going to miss all this so very much when she outgrows it.

So I’ll come back here and read this. And I will remember.

Daddy, You Are Gonna Be SO A-MAZED

2009-08-09T12:12:00.000-07:00

Moiya frequently says this to me in preface to whatever leaping, dancing, or climbing feat she is about to demonstrate. But the greatest joy I’ve had in these past five years’ adventure, what has “a-MAZED” me most has been seeing my daughter’s mind develop. I watch in fascination not just as she learns to do things, but as her comprehension and thought processes grow deeper and richer over time.

People get so worked up over the “sanctity of life”. Ok.. nothing wrong with that. But in fact life itself is common as dirt on this planet. Every amoeba and sand flea has life. “What’s so special about life?” The 9th Doctor asked. “It’s just nature’s way of keeping meat fresh.” As Dickinson less snarkily observes, death (and consequently life) is the “common right of toads and men/Of earl and midge the privilege.” What’s rare in the cosmos is not life, but intelligence. And as much as a cherish and celebrate my daughter’s life, it is her growing capacity for observation and thought that delights me.

Once I could report and record each week on the new word she had acquired. Then it grew to several new words per day. And then, in about a two-week period she suddenly began acquiring language faster than I could track it, in seemingly quantum leaps and from sources which I could not even begin to indentify. Without warning she was using asking questions about concepts that I did not even know she was cognizant of.

And those questions have progressed from simple identification of the items around her. We’ve gone from the basic “What dat? What dat call’d Daddy?” to the more esoteric “Were there any cities before there were people?” (and my favorite, “What do you think Mary Poppins smells like?”)

Some questions betray anxiety going on below the surface (“Daddy, do they have bathrooms in Big Kid School?”) And some – some I’m not sure about. Moiya frequently asks me part way through a movie “Daddy, is this like magic?” which I interpret to mean “Is this a fantasy/pretend event, or can I take this as an accurate representation of how things outside my experience work?” At least that interpretation seems to work. Dr. Who and Disney are magic. The Railway Children is not.

Some higher elements of thought have been there from the beginning. Moiya has always had an excellent memory, and as soon as she could talk we discovered that she has an amazing sense of direction. Even today she can identify places she saw only once in infancy. Considering I can get lost on the way to my own bathroom, this ability impresses her old Dad greatly.

Time seems to be the last real conceptual hurdle. Until recently ‘yesterday’ was used to denote any period of time in the past, from 24 hours to a week, to several months. Early on when she referred to things we had done a year earlier as having been ‘yesterday’ I would correct her. “Well, Sweetheart.. actually that was several months ago.” And she would look at me for a minute, then nod to herself in some internal confirmation and say “Uh-huh. Yesterday.” And it finally dawned on me that Moiya was not misremembering. She simply did not physically have the neural pathways laid down in her brain in whatever segment processes time. Like the book “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” it was a fascinating look into the processes of human intelligence.

The concept of time has become more sophisticated since then (though I never did figure out how the answer the oft-repeated question “Daddy.. is it tomorrow today?”) I’ve put up a white board calendar and we count out the days to important events, and there are icons for regular weekly events at home and school. And we (mostly) know the names of the days, even if we are still vague on their order.

Two years ago, Moiya’s drawings were undifferentiated scribbles. Then one day about a year ago, she picked up a form from my office, and when I looked up, she had filled the form in with tiny, parallel, vertical lines. She knew that the forms were usually filled with writing and so she attempted to imitate writing as it appeared to her. From that point forward she would always use looping shapes when she was drawing, but angular shapes when she was ‘writing’. As she actually learned to make letters in school and began writing in a readable form, so also her drawings of people rather suddenly morphed from squiggles to recognizable stick figures.

And language. Always there is the wonder of language. Moiya’s vocabulary is extensive by now, and where she doesn’t know a word, she makes her own, which endlessly delights the Lewis Carrol streak in her Daddy’s soul. When there are tickle wars, one of the places that she’s most vulnerable is her “leg pits” – which is the area behind the knee. And sometimes she just wholesale makes things up. “That’s Bentwancha.” She will say. “Do you know what that means? It means getting your cat to eat her food.” We’ve stopped giving all the dolls the names of the other children at daycare, and instead have begun making up new names (perhaps the daycare didn’t have enough kids).

Green Eggs and Hand
Sometimes I confess that I let my fascination with my daughters inner workings run away with me. Sometimes she’ll “act like a real person” and do things like – I think I’ve mentioned elsewhere – getting all her books together and the tapes rewound for return to the library on Saturday morning without being asked. Or on using the last of the toilet paper, removing the cardboard tube, getting a fresh roll from the cabinet under the sink and putting in into the holder.

One of her chores is collecting the trash from the upstairs wastepaper baskets and putting new plastic bags back back into the empty cans. I went into my room one night after Moiya had gone to bed to find that she had apparently not been happy with the tendency of the bags to fall into the can. And so she had gone to my desk, found the box of rubber bands, and used one to secure the bag more tightly.

After such displays of intelligence, I am completely blindsided when she returns to the real world and acts like a five year old (i.e. insane). If took only a second of me turning my back while we were dying Easter eggs for her to plunge her hands into the green dye. By the time I turned back around she was admiring her vivid green skin, and for several days I was the father of the Daughter from the Black Lagoon. And as recently as a few weeks ago, she proudly showed me how she had organized her room by taking all of the pieces from her seven or eight jigsaw puzzles and putting them all in one box. I have to constantly remind myself that, no matter how excited I get at the glimpses into her expanding consciousness, brain isn’t really dry yet. Perhaps some sort of “WET PAINT” sign would be nice, so that I’m braced for such oddities and don’t hurt her feelings unintentionally by yelping “You did WHAT?”

And it would have helped me last week. Moiya has developed a sudden passion for playing hide and seek. Indoors. In a small apartment. And it took me as very long time to learn how to play this game, because I was forgetting that her brain isn’t dry yet. As it turns out, the object appears not to be to find her. She will hide over and over and over behind the chair in her room, where she is plainly visible. And she will continue to talk to me from behind said chair whilst I am “looking” for her. But she usually prefers to hide in my room, which has only a bed, a small bookcase, and a desk in it. “Okay” she will call from under my desk, her legs sticking out. “Come and find me. But you can’t look near your bed or the desk” Which usually leaves daddy blinking in confusion and faux-looking in another room. “NO, DADDY! In YOUR room. Just don’t look near the bed or the desk”

Like I said.. brain hasn’t quite gelled yet. But dear Lord how much fun it is to watch it grow.

Grave Matters

2009-07-10T13:23:00.000-07:00

On the way back from St. Louis after visiting Mom over the July 4th weekend, I decided to stop off at the cemetery to visit Dad’s grave. I hadn’t done so in awhile, not wanting to confuse my little daughter. But I’d been missing Dad especially keenly of late and decided that, at the ripe old age of five Moiya was mature enough to face life’s Great Mystery.

When we arrived at the cemetery I asked Moiya if she wanted to wait in the car while I paid my respects. But she said no, that she’d like to come with. So hand-in-hand, we walked up the gentle green slope to visit “Gran’pa Jerry.” At the grave, I knelt and traced my fingers over the lettering on the stone and helped Moiya sound out the words. She looked around with mild puzzlement and asked where Gran’pa Jerry was. I said “You’re standing on him, baby. He was buried right where we are standing.”

I was expecting questions or puzzlement. After all, coming to terms with the ultimate fate of us all is not something one deals with every day. Moiya looked down at the ground in thought for a very long time, small brow furrowed, toying at the blades of grass with her toe. Finally, after a prolonged silence, she looked up at me.

“Can we pull off the grass and look at him?”

She seemed quite disappointed when I said no and tried several times to talk me into it.

Finally we got back into the car and returned home.

You can’t make this stuff up. You really can’t.

Clever

2009-06-25T12:40:00.000-07:00

I love my daughter’s sense of humor, which varies wildly from the silly to the sophisticated. There’s always poop and fart jokes, naturally (though I’ve explained that not everybody thinks such things are funny and therefore they should probably be reserved for Daddy. I need to blog about poopcookies at some point before that game is outgrown)

But Moiya’s also developed a dry wit that cracks me up when it appears suddenly in the midst of all the rollicking silliness. We’ve practiced ‘serious face’ for years (I thought it was a useful skill for her to have) and she’s gotten pretty good a looking solemn on demand. So that now she can deliver jokes with an absolute deadpan expression when she deems it appropriate. (see the episode of the flying mermaid)

A few weeks back we’d spent the day together and, as I hadn’t gotten to se her in awhile I had made up my mind to giver her my undivided attention for the day. We roughhoused and fly kites (well.. one kite, and Daddy had some trouble sharing). We made cookies and got movies from the library and played Go Fish and Candy Land. And we were getting the sleeping bags out for Popcorn Night when I noticed Moiya sitting on the sofa and looking forlorn. At first I got not response reproachful looks when I asked what was wrong. Finally Moiya sighed and said “I’m sad, Daddy” And when I asked why she said “You’re just not giving me any attention”

My jaw dropped open and I stammered a few times before yelping “WHAT?!?”
And then realized when my child erupted in helpless laughter that I’d been had again. Now periodically, when we’re deep into a game of Old Maid, Moiya will look up from her cards and say deadpan “You’re not giving me enough attention”

“I’m clever” has slipped into use in our household as an after effect of the last season of Dr. Who.”Aha!” I’ll exclaim as I effect some miraculous repair on a toy which I really hadn’t thought could be saved.”Oh, your Daddy is a clever man indeed!” And when Moiya asks, as I hem her pants, how I ‘know how to do so many things’ (a naiveté I’m sure won’t last much longer) I’ll reply “Because I’m clever.”

So it was that one day, after Moiya had done something certifiably insane, whilst Daddy was spluttering and having seizures and exclaiming “WHY? What on EARTH were you thinking? WHY DID YOU DO THIS!?” Moiya looked me in the eye and said solemnly “Because I’m clever, Daddy.” And I lost it.

I love my daughter’s sense of humor.

The Nose Knows

2009-06-25T12:35:00.000-07:00

My daughter and I sniff books.

I meant that literally. I’m not sure when it started. I think we had a newly printed glossy color book from the library which still had it’s new book smell. Moiya picked it up, stuck her face in it and inhaled deeply.

So I did too. And I admitted I liked the smell of old books too. So we got some more books and sniffed them all. Now during story time, often as not we stop and smell the books before we read them. This puts me in mind of the fact the centers of the brain which control smell are closely linked with the areas controlling memory. Nothing will call a memory back with the visceral suddenness of smell. There’s a certain musty, sun-heated wood odor I’ll catch every now and again which catapults me across time into my grandparents garage in Dallas in July. There’s another similar one which puts me on the ground next to my Dad as he closed the doors on his Mom’s garage in Kansas city in the fall. I don’t have a clue what the difference is in the two odors, but me brain does.

And since I’ve been a Dad, I’ve discovered (or rediscovered) other smells which evoke powerful memories of childhood to me. Some I would have expected, but others are a little surprising. In no particular order then, these are the smells which access the dormant areas of my brain where childhood’s summer lives:

a. Ballpoint pen ink
b. Hot vinyl
c. Sunscreen
d. Insect repellant
e. Crayons
f. Playdough

Stretching Exercises

2009-06-19T10:06:00.000-07:00

So I was putting training wheels on Moiya’s first two-wheeler (aka the “Big Girl Bike”) the night before her birthday, and it occurred to me how much alike we both were. Not Moiya and I… me and the training wheels.

Moiya is still very much in the “fotch me” phase which, while tiring, is deeply pleasing to me. I’m constantly answering calls to witness a whole host of things – dances, leaps, and feats of dexterity. I watch silly faces and funny walks, painting and coloring, hopping, skipping, twirling and running. “See what I can do, Daddy? Aren’t you just so very proud of me?” And I am. I so very much am.

And I love that she is mentally and physically active. I love that she reaches and explores. I love that she still wants to share it with me. And increasingly, it is not only that I observe, but my physical vantage point which is important. As often as not if we are outdoors, Moiya will indicate a spot with her foot. “You stand HERE, Daddy,” she will say. “So I can show you this.” When I work in the garden (aka the patch of dirt outside the apartment) Moiya will pick up a leaf or twig and ask if she can throw it in the dumpster which sits about 60 feet from our door. It isn’t about the ‘trash’ of course, but about the exhilaration feeling of walking out of Daddy’s immediate orbit and just a bit into the wide world.

At first I watched her every step of the way, there and back. Now I very deliberately keep on with my weeding and let her make the journey on her own. Daddy’s need to stretch their comfort levels now and again.

A month or so back, Moiya and I were playing in the apartment complex’s playground; There’s a swing set and a slide, lots of sand – and a jungle gym. The jungle gym is an unusual design, being mostly vertical, 10 or 12 feet straight up. There are sections of u-shaped tubes, extending out from a central axis in stepped rows, with each row being slightly offset from it’s neighbors to form and asymmetrical ladder. Moiya had been too timid to climb it the last time I encouraged her to, and this time did not seem to be shaping up any differently. “I don’t think I’m old enough to climb that, Daddy” she said, eying the height apprehensively.

But as she played on the swings, Moiya kept looking over at the jungle gym, and after awhile she went over and began to climb the lowest rung. “Fotch me, Daddy! Stand there” she said, indicating a spot directly beneath her. I stood where indicated and held up my arms to offer assistance if needed. After a few false starts, Moiya made the second rung. And the idea that she *could* do this began to compete in her head with the apprehension. And so she climbed that morning until she was at the top and looking out over the apartment complex, the queen of all she surveyed. “LOOK at me, Daddy! Look how HIGH I am! Did you think I could climb so high? Aren’t you AMAZED?”

Aren’t you so very proud of me?

After she came carefully down, we played on the swings for awhile longer and then went back for another climb. But this time “You stand here now” she said and drew a line in the sand about ten feet further back. And halfway up, she decided that I needed to move to the other side of the chain link fence that surrounds the play yard. As Moiya’s confidence grew, her need to demonstrate it in terms of distance from Daddy grew as well.

Like I said – training wheels.

And so last Sunday, as she was practicing riding her bike – learning to steer and stop, building leg strength and speed, Daddy no longer had to walk alongside as he had the previous week. First we raced (“You go that way and I’ll go this way and you’ll see how I can beat you”). And finally I was instructed to wait in the other side of the parking lot – sidelined whilst my little girl rode here and there – her speed and confidence increasing in tandem. “Look at me, Daddy!”

And I was suddenly struck, as one so often is when viewing the familiar from a slightly different perspective. This child who had lain in my arms for so long, who has loomed so large in my visual field since her birth – seeing her riding on the other side of the lot I was suddenly acutely aware of how tiny.. how unutterably fragile and tiny was my little madly-peddling bundle of pink and gold.

And I was once again seized with the age-old twin terrors of letting go, and holding on too tightly.

"All the kids kept trying to grab for the gold ring, and so was old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she'd fall off the goddam horse, but I didn't say anything or do anything. The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it's bad if you say anything to them"
~J.D. Salinger – “The Catcher in the Rye”~

“Aren’t you just so amazed, Daddy?”
Yes, my darling girl. Oh my, yes.

Lazy

2009-06-15T12:39:00.000-07:00

I was feeling guilty about not having enough time to blog the things that have been going on and thinking what a shame it is that blogging isn't as comparatively easy as posting a facebook status update. And then it hit me: I could collect some facebook status updates and pretend they're a blog entry.

Lazy? Sure. But my whole point in keeping this blog is to preserve the ephemeral memories of my daughter's early life. And those memories - like life - are far more made up of myriad tiny moments than great events.

So.. here's our life, told through insignificant moments:

Now that was weird. Walked in to find my daughter playing cards with the cat. Asked who was winning and Moiya said that she was "'Cause kitty can't count very well."
6/14/2007 5:34pm

I couldn't figure out why after we made zucchini bread all the preschool teachers were giggling and asking if I enjoyed baking. Then I learned that for two days Moiya has been telling everybody that Daddy made 'bikini bread'
June 11 at 11:05pm

loves it when his daughter asks "Daddy, can we turn off the TV?"
June 11 at 7:11pm

is spreading the sleeping bags on the living room floor for popcorn night. Popcorn made: check. Big pile of new library books: check. Crazy child: check. Life is difficult, but good.
June 6 at 8:16pm

is hemming his daughter's pants and thinking that the more things change, the more they stay the same...
May 31 at 4:46pm

is getting sick. Funny how all that hand washing is less effective when a five-year-old sneezes in your face.
May 28 at 10:39am

made cupcakes with his daughter, let her lick the bowl, and now remembers why his ex called sugar "crack for babies"
May 24 at 4:52pm

is listening to "The Little Drummer Boy" for the 4000th time. But this time I get to watch my daughter's impromptu dance, so that alleviates the pain :)
May 17 at 11:05am

wonders what it is about the sound of the word "no" that renders it inaudible to children.
May 16 at 8:56pm

is dealing with a grumpy, whiny, disobedient child.
May 16 at 11:11am

followed by...

Ah.. so few things a good nap can't resolve.
May 16 at 3:15pm

I love my daughter's sense of humor :)
May 14 at 5:45pm

Yea for youthful enthusiasms. Thanks to my daughter, I've now heard "The Little Drummer Boy" 47 times in the last 12 hours.
May 10 at 12:37am

is all 'where, God.. WHERE do they get all their energy??'
May 9 at 9:47am

is nursing an aching back after playing "camp out" on the living room floor all night.
May 3 at 9:20am

is watching Lilo and Stitch with Moiya. Ohana.
May 2 at 10:38am

Ref. my earlier question about insanity and small girls: yesterday my daughter "cleaned" her room by dumping all the pieces from 5 different jigsaw puzzles into one box.
April 27 at 11:54am

had a lovely morning with Moiya, standing in a field flying kites :)
April 26 at 12:11pm

Wonders if all four-year-old girls are insane -- or just his.
April 26 at 8:26am

Cleaned up wet bed (and wet daughter) at 3 a.m. and now can't get back to sleep. We leads the glamorous life, we does...
April 14 at 4:17am

is somewhat dismayed to find that Easter Egg dye is capable of staining linoleum. Does the FDA know about this stuff??
April 11 at 10:50am

Later...

is more dismayed to find that Easter egg dye works far better on four-year- old hands than it does on eggs. Specifically the green dye.. up to the wrists. I'm the father of the Toddler from the Black Lagoon.
April 11 at 5:40pm

is helping his daughter make "panny-cakes" for breakfast :)
April 5 at 9:08am

wishes sometimes it was more socially acceptable to drug children out of their tiny minds.
April 4 at 7:02pm

finally learned to put his daughter's hair up in pigtails. Not perfect, but pretty fair for a novice. And he is quite absurdly proud and happy about it.
April 3 at 6:16pm

Ah.. there's nothing that makes you feel quite so glad to be alive as waking bright and early on a Monday morning to find that your cat's been sick all over the floor.
March 30 at 7:20am

Ah, the joys of parenthood. The first time they walk. The first time they talk. The first time they tell you that they hate you...
March 27 at 5:59am

is amazed at the wealth of childhood memories brought to life from something so simple as the smell of Crayola crayons.
March 26 at 1:24pm

is sitting on the swings with his daughter at the local park, having long silly conversations, enjoying the sunshine, and singing "Sumer is icomin in"
March 22 at 12:59pm

is astonished at his power to kiss away boo-boos on little arms and legs.
March 21 at 8:36am

just had to watch Stuart Little 2 but couldn't hear much of the dialogue over the "vroom" sound of E.B. White spinning in his grave.
March 14 at 6:04pm

is learning not to let his daughter shuffle the cards..
March 8 at 3:28pm

is wondering if he has the only cat that snores...
March 8 at 10:15am

is trying to put !@#$! ponytails on his daughter's !@#$! doll. !@#$!
February 21 at 9:27am

saw Hannah Montana for the first time yesterday, but was distracted by the plaintive cry of his brain cells dying, one by one
February 17 at 9:48am

is sitting on the floor, surrounded by Littlest Pet Shop figures and wondering where his brain went.
February 7 at 11:11am

is experiencing newfound respect for his parents after this weekend, remembering the thousands of board games they played with him as a child.
February 1 at 11:02am

is watching Mary Poppins for the 1,342nd time this week.
January 31 at 4:21pm

is loving teaching his daughter board games
January 23 at 8:04pm

is eating gingerbread with his daughter, enjoying the smell of home-made soup and fresh bread, and feeling unaccustomedly content.
January 18 at 3:17pm

is losing at Candyland.. again.
January 17 at 9:57am

is wishing there was a Flintstones Chewable Valium for Children
December 13, 2008 at 8:56am

is in Christmas Tree light hell. Who invented these damned things?
December 10, 2008 at 8:19pm

is helping little hands decorate the Christmas tree
December 7, 2008 at 8:17pm

is making his daughters hand puppet sing selections from Pirates of Penzance
December 1, 2008 at 7:38pm

is playing dress-up dolls with his daughter (and enjoying the fact that dolls don't complain – unlike actors)
November 22, 2008 at 10:34am

is spending Saturday night sitting on the floor with his daughter, eating popcorn, watching videos and coloring.
November 8, 2008 at 8:55pm

Hide and Seek

2009-05-17T07:31:00.000-07:00

Moiya has discovered Hide and Seek and can't seem to get enough of it. However in a small apartment, there really aren't that many places to hide.

Which is ok, given the way Moiya plays it; she hides while I'm standing there watching (usually in the same place she hide the previous twewlve times), and then I have to go off count to eight (I don't know why, but she always specifies eight). Then I'm supposed to com and 'find' her.

Finding other places to look other than the one her feet arer sticking out of so that the game deosn't end too early is taxing Daddy's imagination.

I must be missing something here...

Not So Far From The Tree

2009-03-24T09:09:00.000-07:00

So last night I was balancing the accounts and could hear Moiya in her room playing. Her scenarios with her dolls tend to involve high drama, and she'll wander in from time to time to give me an update:

Moiya: (Big sigh) "I don't know *what* I'm going to do with Soft Bear. He's been hitting the other students again!"

Me: "Oh dear".

Moiya: (Another big sigh) "And that's not all.. he's been spitting!"

Me: "Mmm.."

Moiya: "And biting. I need you to have a talk with him ‘cause you're the teacher. Then I'm going to have to call his parents. Maybe the police".

Me: "I don't want to be the teacher. I'm busy. You be the teacher".

Moiya: (Sigh) "I just don't know what to do with him! I put him in Time Out. And yesterday he hit James! And then he *kicked* him..."

And so on... and on. I usually just make "um-hmm" noises (being married three time has taught me a few things). And it's pretty funny listening to Moiya on the phone with her grandma. She'll rattle on and on about one traumatic event with her babies after the other until I finally take pity on my Mum and take the phone back. (It reminds me of the time during a visit when Moiya went on for hours about an imaginary girl who lived in the plumbing. I think we all passed out before that one ended).

Anyway.. I could hear Moiya issuing correctives to her misbehaving children and playing with the pots and pans on her "stove". And eventually she brought me a plastic dish and a fork and asked me if I wanted to eat dinner. She "cooks" a lot and I'm used to sampling imaginary foods. So I said yes and asked what dish I was eating.

Moiya looked at me deadpan and said "It's my baby, Keely. She wouldn't stop misbehaving, so I just gave up and cooked her."

I not only ate Keely (at last count, we have four baby dolls and one monkey named Keely) but asked for seconds and complimented the chef.

This morning, Moiya was singing songs to Mr. Sun. She likes to read to Mr. Sun and sometimes makes up songs which last almost as long as her stories do.. usually about whatever is passing by the car windows at the time. (Earlier in the drive she had been humming "With Cat Like Tread" from Pirates of Penzance to Keely, which made her Daddy strangely cheerful for the remainder of the day).

This morning’s song went (As nearly as I can recall):

Little duckie is fluffy and yellow.
Little duckie goes quack quack.
Little duckie swims in the pond.
Little duckie eats your head....

I laughed out loud at that point and that ended the song (sadly).

I suppose I should be worried, but since it's pretty much the same twisted sense of humor I have, I really can't.

Sumer is Icumen In

2009-03-01T13:13:00.000-08:00

Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweþ sed and bloweþ med
And springþ þe wde nu,
Sing cuccu!
~anon. circa 1260~

Living in an urban apartment there is not such a sense of the quickening of seasonal life as I was used to in my slogs around our woods.

But even here, life stirs. I was suprised this week to find that my three hibiscus which I brought indoors before the freezes hit, and which have dropped most of their foliage from lack of light, are suddenly producing blooms again, straining against the kitchen window towards the sun.

So, the weather reports may still be predicting cold and rain and misery, but change is coming. I have it on good authority.

Fotch Me!

2009-02-28T15:09:00.001-08:00

There are words that Moiya either cannot or chooses not to pronounce correctly. This bothers me not at all, as she’s always been very verbal and has quite a good vocabulary otherwise. Some things, like calling hand sanitizer “hanitizer” I suspect are simply because she prefers the sound. I tend to agree and I will miss them when they evolve away in the fullness of time.

Other mispronunciations are more problematic. When she was two years old or so, her mispronunciation of “watch” caused some embarrassment when, in the middle of Wal-Mart, she bellowed (with the volume of which only very young children and jet engines are capable) “F*ck me, Daddy!!”

I don’t mean to suggest that her mangling of the word “watch” sounded vaguely like ‘the F word’. No.. It was spot on. People three aisle away would turn their heads and begin whispering to one another.

“Heh.. Yes Moiya” I said in a stage voice, “I’ll WATCH you.”
By this time, Moiya would be bouncing up and down in the cart hooting “F*ck me f*ck me f*ck me..”

Nobody ever warns you about these things. Diapers, smallpox, child molesters.. these they warn you about. You child getting you hauled out of Wal-Mart by Child Protective Services nobody ever mentions.

I thought we were past all of this until two weeks ago, when wee were coming back from our weekly visit to the public library. Moiya spotted one of our neighbors, Mitch, out walking his big and improbably shaggy dog. So as I opened the door she bellowed “Look, daddy. It’s that Bitch!”

I closed the car door again.

“Umm. Baby, where did you learn that word?” Moiya has heard Daddy say a number of unfortunate things, but not that one. Moiya looked puzzled.

“You mean Bitch?”

“Yes honey. Bitch is a bad word.”

“But… Bitch is his name!”

The light dawned. “No baby.. his name is ‘MITCH’. With an ‘M’. Can you say that?”

Moiya pondered. “Bitch” she said.

And so it goes. Mom ran into this at New Years when she tried to correct Moiya’s pronunciation of “watch”, which has now morphed into “fotch.” Every time Moiya would say “fotch” Mom would try to correct her:

“What sound does “W” make?” she would prompt. Moiya would respond with “Whuh! Whuh!” as they’ve taught her in preschool.

“That’s good! Now say ‘watch’”

“Fotch”

I just smiled happily and said nothing. When you’ve beaten your head against a child-wall as many time as I have, it’s fun to fotch somebody else do it.

And so one day Moiya and I were in the kitchen. I was making dinner, and Moiya was playing with the ‘coffee crumbs’. Each day when I take the coffee filter and old grounds out of the coffee maker, I have to set them neatly in the sink so that when they dry, Moiya can gather them up, drag out bowls and cups and measuring spoons and begin to ‘cook’. She makes soup usually, though sometimes the bowls full of brown gruel are other things: cakes, and sometime meatloaf. Occasionally they are even coffee.

And Moiya kept insisting that I sit and watch her play. She does this with some regularity, and it has always confused me. I understand her wanting me to play with her, but just watching her play has always struck me as silly. And so I opened my mouth to explain for the 42nd time that I had other things to do and was right near by.. she didn’t need my undivided attention.

And then I recalled my Dad and Grandfather. When I was a child, to me those men were gods. And I remembered how it felt when they paid attention to me. It’s hard to put into words fifty years after the fact, but I remember the sensation as though it were yesterday. I glowed. When you are little and powerless in a big world, surrounded by gods and giants, having them pay attention to you and only you was the greatest sensation in the world.

But they were gods, for so I’ve regarded them all my life (and perhaps ever more so now that they are gone). I’m not a god. I’m just me. And 'me' is just a screw-up and a failure.

And I wondered, as I looked at Moiya and her dribbly pots of brown water, if my Dad ever felt like this. Did he, who was so like me in his shyness and insularity, regard himself with the same cold eyes? Did he berate himself in the long nights with his inability to measure up to his father?

Did he ever know he was a god? Does anybody? Probably not.

I think that the popular press has got it wrong. Armchair shrinks keep telling us that we don’t spend enough time with our kids because they aren’t important enough in our busy lives. I think we don’t spend enough time with them because we don’t consider ourselves important enough. When we want to show love, we spend ourselves into debt buying things. Nobody shows love by giving things valueless.

All of this flashed through me head as my mouth opened and then closed. And when it opened again, I said “Okay. I’ll fotch.”

And I did. I stood for a good half-hour doing nothing more than watching my daughter concoct revolting things with coffee grounds. And we had a blast. Every once in a while, she’s glance over to see if I was still watching. And on seeing that I was, she glowed.

“Maybe” I thought, “we can go out later and say ‘hi’ to Bitch.”

Lord, what fools these mortals be

2009-02-28T15:08:00.000-08:00

My child is a perfectly normal four-year-old. Which means that she is a joy and a wonder. And it means that periodically she’s just maddening as hell, usually when Daddy is trying to hurry us somewhere. I don’t know what it is about little kids, but the concepts of time just don’t appear to be part of their neurological equipment yet. Tell a young child to hurry and they will – if they react at all – slow down.

So on occasions when we are running late for work/school and I am trying to hurry Moiya along (with mounting levels of desperation) she will dawdle, getting distracted by anything and everything in her path. She’ll pause to study a bug, despite that fact that it is dead, has been dead for months, and the fact that she looks at the same bug every damned day. Why? Is she expecting it to re-animate? Is she expecting to find the face of the Madonna? Who knows? She’ll pick at lint, pet the kitty, brush her hair, dress her doll, pet the kitty again… all on the way to put on her shoes, which are all of three feet away. And all this while Daddy tears his thinning hair, writhes like a child needing to pee, and exhorts her to come ON already!

But really, it’s just pointless getting upset. Trying to get a child to understand the concept of haste is like trying to explain the concept of red to a blind person; do what you will, it’s going to be an imperfect understanding at best.

On this particular day, Moiya was being particularly annoying. I was having a bad day to begin with, and my child seemed bent on making every little frustration infinitely worse. No matter what ongoing disaster I tried to address, there was Moiya right in the middle of it, doing stupid things: she was making faces, tugging at my shirt, crawling on all fours and pretending to be a kitty, running into me and falling down. Finally after hours of this I exploded. “What in the HELL is WRONG with you? Are you out of you mind, or are you TRYING to be annoying??”

And I’ll remember it to my dying day. Her little face just crumpled.“But Daddy.. I was just trying to cheer you up. I was trying to make you laugh.”

I just stood there a gaped for what seemed like an eternity. Then I scooped her up and hugged her just as hard as I could. Like I said – how can I be so smart until it comes to my own child. And then how can I be oh so stupid?

So now when Moiya is being a goof, suddenly stopping in front of me, hanging off my leg,or any other inexplicably silly, infuriating thing – Daddy remembers to laugh (even if he has to take a deep breath first).

Because now he knows that ‘I love you’ can come in some obscure guises indeed.

New Pictures

2008-12-17T09:17:00.001-08:00

Seeing this picture almost makes me feel guilty for the post I left on my Facebook page awhile back wondering why they can't come up with Flinstones Chewable Valiums for Children^®

Almost..

John Redeux

2008-12-07T20:26:00.001-08:00

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay him down in the middle of the day and take unto himself strings of bloody miniature light bulbs (yea, more numerous are they than all the sands of the seas) to test, though his eyesight fail and his temper be rendered incandescent, that his offspring may decorate the tree.

Touching Father-Daughter Moment #147

2008-12-02T10:30:00.000-08:00

So I’m in kitchen in the process of making Thanksgiving dinner. The turkey is in the oven and the pumpkin pie is cooling. Stuffing, green beans and gravy won’t need to be started for awhile yet. My helper Moiya and I are sharing some cocoa and I’m suddenly filled with paternal affection. I look at her fondly and say “You know what I’m thankful for at Thanksgiving?” She asks what and I say “You.”

Moiya thinks about this for a minute and replies “You know what I’m thankful for, Daddy?”

“What, sweetheart?”

“Mommy.”

“Ah.”

(Sigh) “Ok.. and you.”

I love being a parent.

Lessons

2008-12-02T10:02:00.000-08:00

If I had had the usual nine months to prepare for fatherhood instead of two days, I like to think that I’d have been somewhat better adapted to the strange new world in which I suddenly found myself. I might for instance have known what an “up-the-back” diaper was. I might not have needed sedation after the first time I cleaned poo off my child and my wife then patiently explained to me that I still needed to root through and cleanse my infant daughter’s ‘naughty bits’. I might have known that rubber nipples come in different sizes which you will have to know beforehand when purchasing them (though in truth, nothing could have prepared me for walking in on my wife and her mother discussing the need to boil their nipples).

But I really rather thought that after four years – until the onset of puberty at least – that I was now a seasoned professional and as such, somewhat more inured to such surprises.

But then, I had never painted nails before. My daughter would usually return from a weekend at Nana’s house sporting dainty pink-painted nails. But little girls being what they are (i.e. Like ferrets on speed) the polish never really tended to stay on for long. And the day finally came when Moiya wanted to know if Daddy could do her nails for her. Daddy, being a chump, said yes.

The following are a series of observations which I offer up for the benefit of the similarly innocent who come after me:

Nail Polish: Nail polish comes in bottles the approximate size of an adult human’s thumb, which are constructed of glass so thick that you could drive a car over one without noticeable damage to the bottle. This results in an interior capacity of approximately 3 drops of actual fluid. There are 1,348,927 different shades of nail polish, of which 12,527 appear to be the exact same color to the unaided human (male) eye. Nail polish names are not permitted by law to in any way help differentiate or describe the contents of the bottle, so that “Frosty Plum Orchid” could be any shade from neon purple to jet black. And lastly, nail polish takes roughly 1000 man-hours to produce and is therefore priced only slightly higher by weight than gold.

Movement: If a small girl turns her head to look at something, her foot will move, smacking your hand and sending a stripe of nail polish halfway across the upper portion of her foot. Small girls turn their heads to look at something approximately 32 times per minute. Due to a little-known quantum-level neuro-muscular connection that connects every portion of a child’s body to every other, her feet will also move if she speaks, points, blinks, or thinks. In fact, any bodily movement however small will set off a spasm of palsied movement on the foot scene. You have as much hope of doing this neatly as you have of putting little paper party hats on a litter of piglets, and your only chance of success lies with a drop cloth (large) and lots of masking tape.

Scale: Oh .my. dear. LORD! Have you ever actually LOOKED at a child’s toenails? I mean, really looked at them as a paintable surface? They are the size of pins! Some of them are actually smaller than the nail polish brush you are attempting to paint them with!

Other than that, it's all pretty much a piece of cake.

Popcorn Nights

2008-11-27T20:59:00.000-08:00

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
~Dylan Thomas~

Moiya has never gone to bed easily. It’s odd, being adopted how much of a seeming amalgam she is of my ex-wife and I. Like me and my Father before me, she resists letting go of the day and has from infancy. I never lost that tendency (I’m writing this long after I should have been in bed), and I doubt that she will either.

So when I say that.. since the divorce Moiya has been difficult to put to bed, you should understand that I’m not referring to the usual. I have some difficulty in getting that across to folks in conversation. I get all sorts of well-meaning but pointless advice; “read to her”, “rub her back”, “just walk out of the room”, “rock her”. And in my unkinder moments, I want to ask if perhaps I have “MORON” stamped on my head in large letters that I was previously unaware of. If this was normal insomnia and normal solutions worked, I’d be using them. But it’s as though some kindly neighbor had asked Linda Blair’s Mum during the Exorcist “Have you tired Epsom salts, dear?”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The summer of 2007 was a rough one for Moiya. Her mother had moved out in January. Then by July we had sold off the only home she had ever known and left the woods and all the critters she so loved to live in an apartment in the city. And on the surface, Moiya didn’t seem to react much to any of this. And that worried me. Because my daughter is a very bright, very intuitive, and almost preternaturally observant child. Moiya was not talking about any of the changes in her life despite our efforts to draw her out. But with Moiya it’s what she doesn’t say that’s important.

Then one day the dam broke. Starting in August, Moiya simply would not go to bed, and responded each night to bedtime with violent, towering rages; screaming, howling fits of such furious anger that it scarcely seemed like my child.

And nothing calmed them; Appeals to reason, time out, rocking, spanking – nothing. If I gave in on one point, she would search for another. If there was nothing to fight about, she’d invent something. “I want my bear!” she’d scream. And once I gave it to her, she’d throw it across the room. She’d scream for me to get out, and if I left the room, the screaming would rise to a crescendo of terrified pleading for me to return. Yet on my return, she’d scream for me to leave again. How we kept from a visit by CPS I’ll never know.

After a time, I could see them coming. We'd bathe and get our jammies on. We'd rock and read, brush our teeth and take our vitamins. And somewhere in all that Moiya’s eyes would take on a sly, almost feral look, and I would know that she was searching for an excuse to blow up again.

And she only did it with me. While I was nightly losing my mind with grief and worry, I found that she was exhibiting none of these fits with her Mother, at school, or with Jacquelyn’s mom, Sheila. Just with me. Sheila’s opinion was that Moiya felt safe to act out with me, as I was the one who hadn’t left.. that she could do whatever without fear of abandonment. It’s a (coldly) comforting thought, but I’m unsure. At times I wondered if she wasn’t testing me – trying to see if, when she crossed a threshold of bad behavior, I might not also leave. So during some of the most brutal nights I would hold Moiya, screaming and kicking, and tell her that no matter how ugly she behaved, I was not going away. Even now that things are for the most part better, when I’m angry I try always to make a point of saying that I’m angry with her, but that I still love her and I always will. She doesn’t react, but I know she listens. Moiya always listens. And sometimes I hear her same the same words to her dolls when she thinks I’m not around.

I finally reached the conclusion that Moiya wanted to be spanked. I don’t know why, and I’m not happy about it. But it is what I observed. The only thing that would calm her down, after hours of shrieking, was if I turned her over my knee and gave her one good smack on the rear. Then she’d cry, I’d hold her in my arms and rock her, and within minutes she’d have snuggled down and drifted off to sleep.

Sometimes in the interval between the spanking and sleep, I’d get a little glimpse inside. One night as I rocked her, she wailed into my shoulder “I want my MAMA!!” I observed that I was sure she did. “But,” I said “Mama wouldn’t let you act like this any more than I will.” Moiya shook her head. “I want Mama.. and you.. and our old house.”

Ah.

I finally discovered that however distasteful I found it, Moiya was not going to let me get by with anything short of a spanking. Once she got that look in her eye, if I resolved whatever she had chosen to rage about amicably, she’d simply seize on something else. And she'd keep working until she’d managed to do something which simply could not go unanswered. So usually, simply giving her one whack on the rump at the first sign of trouble resulted in a prompt clearing of the thunderclouds and peaceful sleep (as opposed to hours of heart-wrenching turmoil).

And so I spelled out the new rules clearly. “You will no longer behave in this manner in this house. You will get a warning, and a chance to rectify your behavior, then it’s spanking time.” Since that time The Troubles, as I call them, have abated. We have our bad nights, but not so often, and not so bad as the were that first, awful year.

I’ve tried hard since Jacquelyn left to keep Moiya’s life in as regular a pattern as I can, feeling that with predictability comes comfort. So we have our rituals along with our little games. Sunday is grocery shopping and Bubblebath Night. Thursday is Tumblebus Day. But Saturday is our special release from the cares of the week. We go to the library, where Moiya picks out three video tapes and five books, which she checks out with her very own library card. We like getting the VHS tapes because Moiya knows how to operate the videotape deck and doesn’t need Daddy’s help to view the tapes like she does DVDs. (A few weeks ago, I was upstairs getting myself ready and when I went to prod Moiya into getting dressed and getting her things together, discovered that she was already dressed, had gathered up her books and put them in the knapsack that Aunt Marci had given her. And that she had rewound all of the videotapes before putting them back in their cases. I was stunned. I’m often stunned.) Sometimes there are puppet shows at the library. And we always sit for awhile and do puzzles, which Moiya is getting quite good at.

And Saturday is Popcorn Night.

After dinner we make a bowl of popcorn, break out the sleeping bags, and camp out in the middle of the living room (sometimes Moiya’s room, but usually the living room) and watch videos and eat popcorn until sleep comes. It isn’t a school night, so within reason Moiya gets to stay up late on Saturday night. Usually all the buddies have to join us as well. Moiya drags all the stuffed animals down, along with every spare towel and blanket in the place, so she can carefully tuck them all in. A favored few sit with us between the sleeping bags, but most lie dotted here and there about the room. Simon usually lays her bulk across Moiya’s feet and sleeps, raising a reproachful kitty eye to quiet us if we get too loud.

And we talk. Usually about silly stuff, in between mouthfuls of popcorn which we steal from one another’s bowls. Sometimes about the films. I’m finding that Moiya misses little, and her comments demonstrate an understanding of the nuances in the action I would not have thought possible in a four-year-old. Sometimes she has pointed out little details that I had missed. And once, out of nowhere in the middle of a Strawberry Shortcake musical number, Moiya just sighed a little and said “It’s hard living in two houses, Daddy”

Like I said.. always thinking.

Persistence of Memory

2008-11-26T17:38:00.000-08:00

We’re neither pure, nor wise, nor good
We’ll do the best we know.
We’ll build our house, and chop our wood
And make our garden grow.
And make our garden grow.
~Candide~

I made dinner last night with my last jar of the tomatoes. And it occurred to me as I opened it what a time capsule it was. I could still smell the lovely scent of the garden and the aroma of the freshly picked tomatoes as strongly as the day I picked them and put them up into jars.

They say that smell is the thing most closely linked in the brain with memory. And the miraculously fresh scent of home-grown tomato in my apartment kitchen brought back such a vivid sense of another time and place. I recalled that those tomatoes were the ones I planted the summer I spent running back and forth from Lanesville, Indiana to Lawrenceburg, Kentucky to see my dear wife and newborn little girl. We were unable to bring Moiya home for the longest time after the adoption, as she was born in one state and we lived in another. The paperwork between the two states dragged on for months with me shuttling between the two locations. One of the few methods I had to work off the stress of those times was toiling in the garden in the early mornings, and the retiring indoors to work on the nursery when the afternoon heat grew too great. I was so determined that everything was going to be perfect for my girls when they finally were free to come home.

As luck would have it, we had a great harvest that summer. I put as much up as I could so they would keep to share with Jacquelyn whenever the lawyers finally said that we could be a family again. I cleaned and packed tomatoes by the bushel and put them into mason jars. And last night I emptied the last of those jars.

The house and garden are long gone now. And the marriage and the wife.

And I sat in the kitchen and pondered once again on how very strange life is.

There is a common behind the apartment houses - a long strip of grass mostly used by folks to exercise their dogs. I noticed that there wasn’t much grass growing in the space directly outside our back door. There’s a strip about 10-12 feet wide and maybe 3 feet deep between our back stoop and the air conditioner that I decided to co-opt it as our “garden”. I figured the guys who mow wouldn’t mind having a bit fewer square feet of weeds to whack. So I bought a roll of garden edging which I hammered into the ground (along a length of yarn strung between two popsicle sticks.. got to do this right) and then poured a few bags of cheap bark mulch over the dead grass. I set out the old metal lounge my folks had on their back porch when I was a kid, got the gas grill out of storage, coaxed my Hibiscus back to life, set out the bird feeders. Et Voila!

It’s not much. Certainly it's not the gardens and woods we left behind. But sometimes illusion will suffice when reality will not. When the weather was cool this summer Moiya and I would retire to “our back yard” and play catch. Or I would lounge in the chair and admire the clouds while she ran off the leftover energy of the day. At one point a family of starlings built a nest in a cranny of the electrical meters bolted to the wall. We’d retire to the kitchen and watch through the windows as Mama starling carried grubs to her hungry babies, while the cardinals, finches, wrens, and the occasional hummingbird came for the food Moiya and I set out for them.

And the Hibiscus and Mandevilla provide big, glorious flowers all summer long. I’ll sometimes let Moiya pick one just for the pleasure of the look on her face as she gently explores them with eyes and fingers, wondering at the softness of the petals and the beauty of their form. We keep bouquets indoor a lot in the summer, though not for the sight or the scent. Moiya, like her Daddy before her, likes to gather clovers and dandelions and whatever else is pretty to her eye when we are out, which she gives to me as a present. We keep them in water on the sill just for the sheer wonder of it. The sight of them makes us both smile. And when the dandelions has gone to fluff, we go outside to puff on them and watch as they sail off on the summer air.

As I say. It’s not much. But it will do.

Except for the smell of tomatoes.

Night of the Living Dad

2008-11-26T16:19:00.000-08:00

Moiya’s a little confused on gender at the moment and so little oddities tend to creep into our conversation. “This is Andrew,” Moiya will say, holding up a doll in pink. “She’s a boy.” She has another little girl doll, also in pink, which she has dubbed "Baby Jesus". (Cross-dressing Jesus was not a subject covered in Catechism in my day, but perhaps things have changed.) “Some people are boys” Moiya remarked apropos of nothing one day last week as we were getting into the car. “And some are persons.” She has a point.

But by far the strangest pronouncement to come out of my offspring’s head of late is her announced intention to raise my father from the dead.

Moiya has always been a bit intrigued with my Dad, whose picture hangs in the living room. One night we were playing in her room prior to getting ready for bed and Moiya was having a pretend conversation on the upstairs phone. After a while I heard her say "Just a minute" whereupon she handed me the phone and said “It’s your Daddy. Talk to him.” It was a weird moment and I was a wee bit cautious when I said "Hello?" But I've gotten more used to it since.

About two weeks back, I was sitting in the living room and Moiya was looking at Dad’s picture. She’s struggling with the concept of death at the moment. She knows Dad is dead, and I’ve told her that the old roll-top desk she likes to sit at in my room was once his and will one day be hers after I am gone. (I usually hasten to add that this will not transpire until she’s an old, old lady).

So she looked at Dad’s picture and asked “Do you miss your Daddy?” I assured her that I did. Very much.

“That’s ok,” she chirped. “I’m gonna make him not dead.”

“Umm.. what?”

“Next time we go to his house, I’ll make him not dead.”

I told her that I’d be glad to take her to the cemetery and she was welcome to give it a whirl. What the heck. No harm in trying.

So a few days later, Moiya is looking at my shoes and comments that they need fixing. I agreed that yes, they did need a spot of glue on the soles.

“Well, when I make your daddy undead” she assured me ‘He’ll fix them for you.”

So.. Jesus is the son of a Jewish carpenter and I’m apparently the son of a zombie cobbler. Who knew?

And then last week, as we were driving, Moiya informed me with great solemnity, “Daddy, you’re going to die.” So I said that yes, someday I would die as all things do, and braced myself to be all warm and reassuring. “Uh-huh. You’re gonna die Friday” she continued “and I’m gonna get your desk.”

I love our car conversations.

Moiya went on to reassure me that after I was dead, she would give me her favorite necklace to wear, but that I’d have to give it back when I got not dead. I asked if she was going to make me not dead. And she exclaimed with the long-suffering tone of one addressing the feeble-minded “NO Daddy! I’m already making YOUR Daddy not dead. I can only do ONE!”

Silly me. I asked who was going to make me not dead, and Moiya suggested that I could ask her Mommy to do it.

I think I could be in some trouble there.

Fireflies and Carousels

2008-11-18T09:08:00.000-08:00

This is a short note I wrote to myself earlier in the summer which I was unable to post at that time. It dates to late August

I have written before in these pages about ‘perfect moments’; those fractions of time where the universe halts, time and space become irrelevant, and a feeling of perfection, of calm delight takes over the soul. I’ve been fortunate enough to experience a few in my life. And each one is burned forever in my memory. Here’s how I described one such recently in a letter to my cousin and guardian angel Betty, when she said she hadn’t seen a firefly in years and wondered where they had all gotten to:

"You should come to Indiana than. Back when I still had Innisfree, one of my greatest joys at night after I put Moiya to bed was to go out and sit on the deck in the dark and watch the hundreds of fireflies. On a few really dark nights, when the join between the dark of the tree line and the dark of the night was difficult to discern, there was a magical illusion where the twinkling of the bugs and the twinkling of the stars became one and left me with the sensation of floating in space. It only happened a few times, but I will cherish it always."

I mention this because a had another, albeit brief one two weeks ago. Moiya and I went to the Kentucky State Fair again this year. She’s been asking since the last one, and I’ve been promising. And “ a Daddy always keeps his promises” as I’ve told her. So we went.

We saw puppet shows and acrobats and bunnies and cows and horsies and Lamas and chickens and ducks. We rode rides (not ready for even little roller coasters yet, we found out) and the train (which is what Moiya calls the tractor-pulled shuttle that circles round the fair the better to deliver patrons to the parking lots. It is quite her favorite ride). And we ate lots of awful, greasy, sugary fair food. It was nice.

And we spent our last ride tickets on the big, old-fashioned carousel, with it’s painted horses. Moiya has always loved carousels. And I have grown to love them because of her. And as we turned, the big horse slowly rising and falling, with Moiya grinning madly and waving at everyone and everything, I looked at my child and was utterly, utterly happy. I haven’t been happy for rather a long time. But just for a moment, all the troubles vanished, and all the little pieces of life slotted nicely into place like some sort of Chinese puzzle-box. And the world was perfect. Just for a moment, life was so very good.

Population Increase (addendum)

2008-11-14T19:04:00.000-08:00

I forgot.. some days Moiya peppers all these imaginary (and not so imaginary) friends with detailed questions about their lives and I have to think fast on my feet. She usually wants to know what Mr. Sun is having for breakfast - and offers to share hers. She wants to know how their day was and what they have done, what color their bedrooms are and what they like to do.

But my favorite was the day she asked Mrs. Sun if she had armpits.

That one is likely to haunt me for awhile.

Population Increase

2008-11-14T12:30:00.000-08:00

Some while back, in the previous incarnation of this blog, I mentioned that Moiya has a range of imaginary friends, for whom I have to provide voices and personalities.

I started the whole thing one day in an effort to amuse her by making my hand ‘talk’, a la Senior Wences. That one character (Handy) became two (his twin, Fred, who insists that they look nothing at all alike) which became three (Duck, who can’t talk, but who eats continually) and which became four when we began talking to the Sun.

That was some months ago. We now have a vast ensemble of personalities. Handy, Fred and Duck are still around, as is Mr. Sun. There is also now a Baby Sun (Sunny) and Mrs. Sun, as well as Luna (the moon), James Bear, Soft Bear, and Puppy. There’s her stuffed horse and his Daddy horse. Then it just gets weird as she begins changing natural laws: We now have Simon (our actual cat – who can apparently hear us talking no matter how far from home we may be) and Bunny (a stuffed rabbit at her mother’s house I’ve never even seen) and Bunny’s Mama. Recently I’ve had to add our actual dog, Wicker (who also lives at her mother’s house). And I have to provide individual voices for them all. Moiya knows each by sound and will correct me if the wrong ‘person’ answers (“No, Mr. Sun.. not you. I was talking to Handy”). Usually the discussions are between one entity and Moiya, but sometimes I get sucked into multi-part conversations which leave me feeling Schizophrenic. Last week I had to conduct a discussion between Mr. Sun and the Clouds – mediated by Moiya – as to who got to use the sky that day.

I draw the line on some things. I refuse to ‘be’ Moiya’s Mommy or Mommy’s boyfriend, or (in the weirdest request) Moiya herself. And I said no to doing the Horse Mommy, as I had used all the the vocal ‘horse’ range I had already.

One nice thing though – now that Moiya is a little older, she’s starting to help out and assume the voices of at least some of the incidental characters herself (especially when Dad has simply had enough and flat refuses in the middle of rush our to come up with yet another damned bear voice (because they all have to be different, yet identifiably “bear”). On occasion this leads to the surreal circumstance of conversations between myself, Handy, Sun, and Duck with Moiya voicing both herself as well as the several stuffed critters she’s lugged along for the journey.

Every morning, as soon as Daddy will let her (“For pity sake child.. let me at least get to the main road!!”), Moiya has to greet Mr. Sun and bid goodnight to Luna. I think Mr. Sun at this point is her favorite, as she’ll some days spend the whole thirty minute ride in to school making up songs to sing to him. On the other hand, you can’t take the Sun indoor with you, so once we are home Handy and Fred regain their status. (Especially at bath time. Handy will have none of it, but Fred usually lets Moiya give him a bath).

And if it has been a good day at school and Moiya has gotten a gold star, Moiya has to tell everyone. Every. Single. One. And they all have to be excited.

Some days, I think I’m going to end up in therapy. But you know.. I’m going to miss them all when they’re gone. I really am.

The Tale of the Flying Mermaid

2008-11-13T18:59:00.001-08:00

I was a theatrical costumer for a quarter of a century, so my daughter’s Halloween costume is a big deal for me. I’ve been making them for her since she was born and was planning this year’s costume well in advance. When she was younger she was pretty ambivalent about the whole thing and Daddy could do whatever he pleased. But last year Moiya had matured enough to take an interest and have ideas of her own. She was in a Wizard of Oz kick at the time and wanted to be Glinda the Good Witch of the South. It didn’t turn out quite as well as the Renaissance Italian gown I made when she was two, but with what I had to spend, it was ok.

So as I was trying to schedule some trips to swatch fabrics I asked her what she wanted to be this year. And found that she wanted to be a mermaid.

Hum. Okay. So I began researching and combing the web for ideas, gathering images and starting preliminary sketches. Three weeks passed and I continued to ask Moiya what she wanted to be for Halloween. She continued to insist that she wanted to be a mermaid. On Friday evening, I told her that we were going to go and look at material for her mermaid costume the following morning.

“I want to be Tinkerbelle”

“Wh.. what?”

“I want to be Tinkerbelle.”

“Tinkerbelle? Tinkerbelle?? Like.. the fairy Tinkerbelle?”

“Uh-huh”

“I thought you wanted to be a mermaid!”

(pause) “I want to be a Tinkerbelle Mermaid”

Well .. I have to admit, that stopped me. But not for long. I started trying over the next few weeks to design a mermaid with wings without much luck. I kept asking periodically is she was sure she really really wanted to be a Tinkerbelle mermaid and yes, she said, she really really did.

Until she suddenly really really didn’t. Then she just wanted to be Tinkerbelle. "Because Tinkerbelle is pretty."

Funny thing though.. I started noticing the appearance of new character in our nightly readings. Moiya doesn’t let me read to her anymore. She does the reading and I and Pirate Dog just sit and listen (here's the back story from the old blog). Not that Moiya can actually read (yet). But she looks at the pictures in the books and makes up stories to go with them. There’s a kind of lovely surreal quality to them that Salvador Dali would have appreciated. Anyway… as she’s got something like 30,000 books, it was inevitable that at least some of them would be Disney. And some of the Disney would have pictures of Arial, the Little Mermaid. But it Moiya’s stories, she is always The Flying Mermaid. I’m guessing that the blue of the undersea scenes is interpreted in her mind as sky. Who knows?

Over time we had lots of stories where the Flying Mermaid made an appearance. And usually she played a sort of deus ex machina role:

“The ponies were all dead. And that made them sad. But the little pigs were hiding in the castle. And they were scared, ‘cause the dragon was coming. And they said ‘Oh no, here comes the dragon.’ And the dragon said ‘I will burn down your castle and I will eat you'.

And then came the Flying Mermaid!!!”

And the Flying Mermaid made everything better with her amazing powers. She banished dragons and healed wounds and restored the vanquished. She diced and sliced and made julienne fries.

I was actually getting kind of excited about doing the Flying Mermaid costume once I got all the back story. But then of course, we had to have a Tinkerbelle costume.

And then disaster struck.

My daughter informed me that wanted a store-bought costume.

I’m sorry to say, Daddy did not take this especially well. (For "I want a store-bought costume" try substituting "I want to be a crack-addict" and you'll have about the right idea). I argued. I pouted. I wheedled and I stormed and I sulked. For a week. But to no avail. The biggest concession I could manage was to get her to promise that I could do her costume next year. But this year she wanted a store-bought Tinkerbelle. Fine. Just... FINE.

So we began our Tinkerbelle hunt. Initially Moiya wanted the costume she saw at our local grocery, but Daddy was having none of that. Daddy counted up his pennies and we went out to a Halloween store. “Look honey.. you could be a pirate. You want to be a pirate?”

“No.”

“How about a princess”

“No.”

(Sigh) “Okay. Here’s Tinkerbelle”

“I don’t like that one.”

“Wha.. what do you mean, ‘you don’t like it’? It’s nicer that the one at Kroger. Why don’t you like this one?”

“I just don’t like it.”

And so it went. From one store to another, all across the town we went examining one Tinkerbelle costume after another and finding them all wanting. Finally, as Daddy was starting to think that the entire parenthood thing had been a really bad idea, we found our costume. It actually wasn’t Tinkerbelle, but one of her friends (When did Tinkerbelle get friends??) and was all in rose tones rather than the requisite green. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to say anything. She was happy and I was anxious to get out and get home. “You’re sure?” I asked. “I can NOT return this. It is costing CASH MONEY I don’t have. Be SURE.” Moiya said that she was, so we paid for our purchase and went home.

I tried the costume on her and found that it fit well enough. I made a few minor tucks and it was obvious that Moiya felt beautiful. And really, what more can a Daddy ask for than that? So I took it off her, put it on a hanger and was in the process of putting it up in the living room closet when a voice came from behind me.

“I want to be Hanna Montana”

…

I froze. I.Just.Froze. My mouth was open and moving, but no sound was coming out. Finally I turned with a roar to rip my child a new anal orifice..

And found her rolling on the ground laughing. Silent, helpless, belly-aching laughter.

“No, no” she finally gasped “I want to be A FLYING MERMAID!”

Dear God, I thought. She’s got my sense of humor.

Welcome to the House of the Flying Mermaid.

Invitation to the Dance

2008-11-13T14:52:00.000-08:00

The other morning, we were running late (as usual). Getting Moiya to hurry to do anything is like trying to herd cats. Like her Daddy, she’s not a morning person, and I found long ago that the only way to get her up at 5:45 a.m. without tears and drama is to get her laughing. So we have this long morning ritual, which usually starts with one of her stuffed “buddies” hopping on her back and bouncing up and down to the tune of Rossini's William Tell Overture (which is something I used to bounce her on my knee to as a baby). They get bucked off and fly screaming over the bed. Then they climb back on and it all starts over again. Eventually they get thrown off and land in the vicinity of her derrière, which at her age is still covered with a (by now rather full) pull-up. This causes them to (loudly) gag, retch and pass out - which is very funny if you’re four (or if you’re a guy at any age).

Eventually that game ends and Daddy begins fearfully weeping about having to remove the stinky pull-up. And, having done so he gets very (and repeatedly) confused about where to dispose of it, trying the bureau (NO DADDY!), Moiya’s desk (NOOO DADDY!!), the laundry hamper (NOOOOOO!!) until the poor stupid old man finally figures out to put it in the disposal bin in the bathroom.. where he has to wait until he gets the all-clear to return to the bedroom, to find that Moiya has (gasp) disappeared. Ignoring the snorts and giggles coming from beneath the blankets, Daddy lays down for a short nap – only to discover that there is a “tiny ghostie” in the bed. Eventually this is revealed to be Moiya and the ‘panty rodeo’ begins, wherein Daddy has to try to get panties on his naked child whilst she windmills her feet wildly (I’ve gotten surprisingly good at this, actually. The fact that this is an actual point of pride for me says frightening things about my psyche, I suppose). And finally, with an offer to let her pick out her own clothes for the day, Moiya is up.

On the plus side, after all this I'm usually pretty well awake myself without the need for caffeine.

We dress, we brush our teeth and hair, we find and put on our shoes, and Daddy makes the dash into the kitchen to get breakfast for her and lunch for me. Not surprisingly, on this particular day we were running late, and none of Daddy’s desperate urgings were having any effect on making Moiya move any faster.

And then she asked me to dance. She was standing in the middle of the living room floor in her coat, holding James Bear and asking me to dance. And I started to say “What, are you insane? Did you not hear anything I said about being late for work?”.

And then I stopped and thought “screw this”. And I danced with my daughter.

She likes to dance to Christmas music generally, and Manheim Steamroller Christmas music in particular. So at 6:25 in the morning, I found myself waltzing (after a fashion) with my tiny girl and a stuffed bear to “White Christmas”.

It was a wonderful morning.