We have just returned from eating ice cream down in the village and the Girl Child is running laps in my bedroom around her mother who is seated on the floor. We had the following exchange, me and the She Who Was Hopped Up On Sugar:

Me: Hey, Sugar Girl!

Girl Child: I'm not Sugar Girl.

Me: So, what makes you so sweet, then?

Girl Child: [pause for thought] You loving me.

Very sweet, isn't it?

Posted by: Random Penseur at 07:48 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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This morning at breakfast, the Girl Child and I watched as her brother happily painted his face and hair with blueberry butter (really, a yogurt spread). My wife said to him, "you are such a goof ball".

I looked at the Girl Child and we had the following exchange:

Me: Where did you get such a goof ball for a brother from?

Girl Child: You made him.

So, there.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 09:21 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Tonight, while watching the most excellent Puerto Rican comeback against the Aussies in basketball, I notice the Boy Child is marching over to the bar. The Girl Child follows him. While I direct my attention to the game, I hear from over by the bar:

"Boy Child", she admonishes (she did actually use his name), "Get out of Pappa's Scotch!"

She is clearly looking out for me. Or my Scotch. Either way, she is such a good kid.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 07:38 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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We allowed the girl child to stay up late last night and the night before to watch the Olympics. Together, we watched the medal ceremony for the first American fencer to win a gold medal. As an ex-fencer myself, I was thrilled. The young woman stood on the podium and they played the national anthem. The girl child was playing with a stuffed animal and stopped when the music started. And this is what she said:

What is that music? It's so beautiful!

Thus warming this old patriot's heart a little more.

Here's hoping we see some more world records broken by drug-free athletes!!!

Posted by: Random Penseur at 09:48 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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The Girl Child and I were watching the Olympics on Sunday, specifically some of the swimming. She was pretty interested in it and so, dreaming of seeing her on the podium one day, we had the following conversation:

Me: Those are the fastest people in the whole world swimming this event right now. Isn't that cool?

Her: Yes.

Me: Would you like to swim like that one day at the Olympics?

Her: [Pause as she thinks about it] No, I just want to swim fast in the kiddy pool.

And so my dreams of vicarious Olympic glory slink away.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 02:43 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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1 One step at a time, Random!

Posted by: Mick at August 17, 2004 03:39 PM (zY+L9)

2 Good point, Mick. Today, the kiddy pool! Tomorrow, the world!

Posted by: rp at August 17, 2004 04:20 PM (LlPKh)

3 This post made me giggle, then I read all the way down to the bottom of the page, so now I have tears on my cheeks and one bit of advice I reeeally wanted to make sure you see, hence commenting here... Get a puppy. It is THEE only way to even begin to heal a heart broken by the loss of a good dog. This I know. Get a puppy. I promise, it'll help... a LOT. Even if your parents don't want one, if you can get one yourselves, it'll make you and your daughter feel better and even your Mom and Dad when they get to see 'im. Puppy faces are the most healing thing God ever put on this Earth...

Posted by: Stevie at August 17, 2004 05:40 PM (oeRPb)

4 IMHO, so is puppy breath, but that just may be my own weirdness, there... *giggle*

Posted by: Stevie at August 17, 2004 05:42 PM (oeRPb)

5 Mmmm...puppy breath. Ahem... I've been reading about last week as well. I sure hope this week is working out much better for you and the fam. At the very least, I hope you got more sleep. Swimming fast in the kiddy pool has its own challenges...namely, random kiddies.

Posted by: Linda at August 17, 2004 09:29 PM (9Pzdi)

6 Stevie, thanks so much for the advice. We are deep in the midst of puppy negotiations and only need to first agree on a breed. My dad wants another Kuvasz and my mother a Golden. Linda, thanks. Things are picking up because, if for no other reason, that is the nature of life. And, it is clear you have spent some time yourself recently in a kiddy pool.

Posted by: RP at August 18, 2004 09:02 AM (LlPKh)

7 The art to navigating a kiddy pool is not limited to dodging kiddies, but also the byproducts that such kiddies produce. Great post though, just started reading your blog today, I also like the next post about the English Language, kudos!

Posted by: Oorgo at August 18, 2004 06:37 PM (lM0qs)

8 My only thought about this is that I wouldn't asked "Would you like to do that someday?" 'cause that puts the kid on the spot. I'd've said "..and you could do that some day, too, if you wanted to". It tells them that they can be anything they want without demanding that they tell you what they want yet. I always hated when adults asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. If I said "Astronaut" then they said "Don't you want to be a doctor so you could help people?" Eventually I just answered "I want to be a doctor so I can help people." Maybe they were trying to tell me that I could be a doctor, but it always felt like they were telling me that what I wanted was wrong.

Posted by: Tuning Spork at August 18, 2004 08:42 PM (2iTIs)

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I was awakened this morning by the Girl Child ("GC") crawling into bed at around 7:00. I asked her why she got into our bed and she said, "because I love you". I thought that was very sweet and then she added, "also, I was very hungry and would like to go out for pancakes this morning".

I turned to my wife and asked, "what do you think, Mamma?"

And the GC said: "No, you tell her what she thinks."

I said: "What? You mean you want me to tell her what she thinks instead of asking her what she thinks about going out for breakfast?"

GC: "Yes." [Tone: emphatic]

Upshot: I am signing off to go take the family out for breakfast. Why? Because I believe I have just been told by my 3.5 year old what I should be thinking.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 08:13 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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I managed, all by myself, to get my mom home from the hospital on Wednesday and to get her comfortably installed back in her own house. She was happy to be back, although, within 5 minutes of sitting down, the phone rang with the news that one of her dearest friends had died that day. She looked quite diminished by the call when she hung up. As I was leaving, she asked me to have my daughter call her when she got up from her nap. I told her I would.

After the girl child's nap, I gave her the phone and ran out to pick my wife up from work (I had her car for the day). The rest of the story is as told to me by my mother.

The Girl Child and her grandmother had a very pleasant chat until GC told her grandmother that she had to go to the bathroom and her grandmother said that she'd call back later. Well, the GC insisted that she could take the phone with her and my mother just sort of tagged along. Until the GC tried to drown my mother by dropping the phone into the toilet bowl.

When my mother called her back, the GC told her:

"Nanna, I am so embarrassed! That has never happened to me before in my whole life!"

The GC told us about the incident when I returned home with the wife and she concluded her narrative with the words, said very solemnly: "It was a very silly thing to do."

Posted by: Random Penseur at 09:44 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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1 I love "whole life" comments from the young, they crack me up everytime.

Posted by: Rachel Ann at August 13, 2004 09:54 AM (+fHyg)

2 That's cute. I like your mother's comment at the end. That's priceless!

Posted by: Mick at August 13, 2004 02:58 PM (zY+L9)

3 At least something funny happened to you after your disasterous week!

Posted by: Hannah at August 14, 2004 09:10 AM (MMJNM)

4 What a wonderful vignette. How sweet AND silly. Bear, too, is learning embarassment and exclamations. Did we skip over the part where you had to fish a phone out of the toilet, clean it, see if it was still working, console GC, and find the funny in the whole thing?

Posted by: Elizabeth at August 16, 2004 04:42 PM (s0bfE)

5 Ah, no. We fished it out, determined that the handheld thing is fried, threw it out, and reached into the bank account and bought a new phone.

Posted by: RP at August 16, 2004 04:55 PM (LlPKh)

6 Oh, didn't need to console GC because we weren't upset or angry. She promised not to do it again and that was that. Also, it was a mighty old phone.

Posted by: RP at August 16, 2004 04:58 PM (LlPKh)

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Just a quick note, to illustrate how funny it can be when a child answers a rhetorical question. We were at breakfast, at a local diner, and I convinced the girl child to take one more bite of her pancakes. I found a really good bite, put it on the fork, and this is what we said to each other:

Me: Here's a great bite, full of butter and syrup. Fat and sugar, what could be better than that?

Her: Well, we could have dessert.

Just so you know, I don't embellish these little exchanges. I don't need to.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 04:10 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I got home late last night after a client dinner sprinkled with liberal amounts of bourbon, but not too much because I have to be in Court this morning and judges don't like it if they can smell the booze you're sweating.

The girl child called to me from her room. It was about 9:30 and, after I had gotten out of my suit, I went in and crawled into bed with her. We chatted for a minute and then had the following conversation, which amused me so I share it here:

Me: Did you have fun at camp today?

Her: No

Me: Well, was anyone mean to you?

Her: No

Me: Did anyone hit you? (part of the fantasy world of a 3.5 year old)

Her: No

Me: Did you hit anyone?

Her: No

Me: Did you get put in time out again? (Never happened, again fantasy from her)

Her: No

Me: Did you put anyone in time out?

Her: No

Me: Well, did you eat anything fun today?

Her: You mean, at camp?

Me: Sure. Do they feed you at camp?

Her: Yes. They gave us chocolate chip cookies AGAIN! [Said in tone of exasperation along with hand waved rigidly for emphasis]

Me: You didn't want chocolate chip cookies?

Her: No!

Me: What did you want?

Her: Bananas with whipped cream. (Which I believe she has never eaten in combination before).

Me: Did you tell them you wanted that?

Her: No.

Me: They were just supposed to know?

Her: Yes [emphatically].

Me: Sweetheart, I love you.

Her: Why?

Me: Well, there are too many reasons for me to give tonight since you really should be asleep.

Her: Ok, tell me one now and you can tell me the rest tomorrow.

Me: Ok, one reason is because you are my daughter.

Her: Hmpf. Tell me THREE and the rest tomorrow.

Me: Because you're wonderful and special, too. Now, who's the smartest, nicest, prettiest little girl in the whole world*?

Her: There are two. Mamma and me. Now I have a question for you.

Me: Ok.

Her: Who is the smartest and goodest boy in the whole world?

Me: Your brother?

Her: And who else? Pappa!

At which point kisses were exchanged and she went off to sleep.

I feel constrained to point out that she omitted any reference to my looks.

*Maybe we overthink this, but whenever I ask her this question, I put the pretty at the end because the last thing I want to do is make her image conscious, which all girls are at some point, and to let her know that I rank other things above her physical appearance. My wife and I discuss these things. You do have to pay careful attention to what and how you talk to a child, I think. You send messages all the time. I want her to be secure that she is attractive, because it is foolish to say it is not important, but I don't want her to obsess over it. Again, maybe we're overthinking this too much!

Posted by: Random Penseur at 08:54 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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Does anyone really doubt that television is evil and will suck the soul right out of your body, feed on it, and discard what remains, leaving you only an empty husk of a shell? It is totally soul destroying, imagination killing, attention span reducing, devil spawn. Unless, of course, it's showing something good, like baseball, or opera, or ballet, or, football, or the Olympics, or some of the really nasty HBO programming that I like so much. But for kids, it sucks.

This cannot be a shock to anyone. Let's review basic television economics, shall we? TV exists as a medium to sell stuff. TV, public broadcasting and viewer supported broadcasting aside, is supported by the sale of advertising. If the shows are not pulling the viewers, then the advertisers pull the plug on the show and that's that. The writers may tell you different, they may tell you that they are creating art or cutting edge programming, or some other nonsense. Don't believe them. Content is paid for and driven by money spent to advertise. Children's TV is the worst, of course because they are selling directly to minds incapable of making critical distinctions between competing claims.

So, we don't let our children watch television, except with us and generally just some sports or dance programs. The girl child gets to watch one Disney video a week and that's usually that. No TV at all for the boy child because, at 1.5, he's simply too young. We took this decision a long time ago and certainly before reading this article today in the NY Times entitled: "TV's Toll on Young Minds and Bodies".

This article was frightening to me. I will pull out some of the scarier findings for your consideration. Just bear in mind that I've not looked at any of the studies referenced herein and can't vouch for their rigor.

*The average young child in this country watches about four hours of television a day and each year sees tens of thousands of commercials, often for high-fat, high-sugar or high-salt snacks and foods; thousands of episodes of violence; and countless instances of alcohol use and inappropriate sexual activity. By the time American children finish high school, they have spent nearly twice as many hours in front of the television set as in the classroom.

*Nearly 60 percent of children aged 8 to 16 have a TV in their bedroom.

*A child glued to the tube is sitting still, using the fewest calories of any activity except sleeping. Such children get less exercise than those who watch less television, and they see many more commercials for unhealthful foods and beverages. They also have more opportunity to consume such foods than do children who are out playing. It is no surprise, then, that the percentage of American children who are seriously overweight has risen to more than 15 percent today, from 5 percent in 1964.

*Studies have found that children who watch 10 or more hours of TV a week have lower reading scores and perform less well academically than comparable youngsters who spend less time watching television. Long-term studies suggest several reasons.

*One study of 2,500 children conducted at Children's Hospital in Seattle and published in April in the journal Pediatrics found that the more TV watched by toddlers aged 1 to 3, the greater their risk of attention problems at age 7. For each hour watched a day, the risk of developing attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder increased by nearly 10 percent. Children with this problem find it hard to concentrate, have difficulty organizing and exhibit impulsive behavior.

*Studies of brain function show evidence of direct harm to the brains of young children who watch television for two or more hours a day. Watching television fosters development of brain circuits, or "habits of mind," that result in increased aggressiveness, lower tolerance levels and decreased attention span, in lieu of developing language circuits in the brain's left hemisphere.

*Other problems associated with excessive television viewing are poor sleep quality and a greater likelihood of taking up smoking. A study two years ago by the Center for Child Health Outcomes in San Diego found that children aged 10 to 15 who watched five or more hours of television a day were six times as likely to start smoking as those who watched less than two hours a day.

To borrow from Animal House, fat, hopped up on sugar, and stupid is no way to go through life.

The article gives a website for appropriate child videos and I'm going to check it out later. What are some classic videos any of you recall watching as a child?

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Last night I got home from work and I was cranky and overheated. Cranky because work was less than fulfilling yesterday and overheated because dear, OLD, Metro North had no air conditioning on its train cars last night, at least on my train.

I walked in and was greeted by my daughter gleefully telling me: "I was a pill today, an absolute pill." That set her tone for the remainder of the evening. My wife gave the baths but, due to poor listening skills by my daughter, had to tag out. We do that, the two of us. When it gets to the point where you feel like you are going to lose your patience, you can call out to the other parent, "I'm tagging out" or "you need to tag in" and, like in wrestling, the other parent steps into the ring. It has kept us from losing our minds, this little game. The problem will be when the kids figure it out and start to game us on purpose. But, that's another day, I hope.

After the baths was story time. Story time is a critical time of the day for my daughter. We lead up to it with negotiations concerning the number of stories, the mix of stories (if shorter ones are chosen, can we read more of them), and the selection themselves (because I insist on new ones from time to time). Usually, the boy child could not care less about story time. He has shown no interest in sitting on my lap while I read and when I try, he loudly demands to be set free. Last night was different, though.

The girl child selected three books: "There's a Wocket in my Pocket"; Cecil's Garden" and "Kiss Good Night". I pulled the boy child up since he was within reach and we began with the wocket book. He lasted all of two pages before wanting to get down. So I let him down and continued reading to the girl while keeping watch on the boy with my peripheral vision. He picked up the stethoscope from the girl child's doctor kit, put it around his neck and then, seemingly content, came back and held his arms out to be picked up again. Whereupon he rejoined us for the remainder of the wocket book and seemed to pay close attention to the last two books as well. He didn't reach for them or try to turn or crumple the pages, he just sat there happily as I read with, I must admit, greater animation than usual. I gave a different voice to each character and tried every oratorical flourish I could think of to keep his interest and get him hooked on the experience.

After we finished the three books, I began to rock in the glider chair and he slipped down a little in my lap to lay his little head in the crook of my arm. He was obviously very tired. I told the girl child that her brother was tired and she leaned forward a bit to take a look and then promptly lay down herself across my lap and put her head on his little chest and shoulder.

And we rocked in total peace and tranquility and I didn't want that moment to end for anything. I'd rather be home with them now, honestly, even if the girl child is being a pill.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 08:36 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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This morning, it was just me and the girl child for breakfast. The boy and the wife slept in. The girl awoke by coming in and climbing in for a wordless cuddle. We took the show downstairs because I needed coffee and she needed food. As I served her, she passed gas and I asked her, "did you just toot?" and she replied, laconically, "yup". So, now bear with me because the rest of the conversation took place in Norwegian, I asked her, "er du en tootie pike?" and then I said, "well, det var ikke norsk", because toot and any variation is not a Norwegian word. Meaning: "Are you a farty girl, well, that wasn't Norwegian". And she replied: "Jeg er norsk og det var en norsk fis!" Translation: I am Norwegian and that was a Norwegian fart."

So there.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 04:45 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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