Fatherly Love

Sitting at the kitchen table watching Emile go out to the trailer for work, Larkin announced rather wistfully, "that's a great father, that one is."

Larkin's Song

(sneaky guest post by Emile...)

As we were pulling up to the house in the car today Larkin asked if I could play the "we all live in a yellow submarine" song. I said that we could put it on once we got inside, but by the time we got through the door she had become distracted by singing lyrics. She asked if someone could write down her song for her and this is what Jenny recorded:

We all live in a yellow submarine
yellow submarine
yellow submarine
And the skies of the yellow submarine floats by clouds
Floating by houses
And past flying red jewels
A dog barks at us flying by
And then an army of floating jellyfish
Say the world's going to be invaded by water
And then a giant nice piece of cloth comes
And stops the world from being invaded by water
And then a giant sword comes and battles the piece of cloth
But the piece of cloth won
And a river comes and gets the piece of cloth all wet but they didn't know the piece of cloth was a cloth fairy
And the cloth fairy got ready and dried herself off with her spell

;)

Socialization, Gastropods, and Game Theory

Larkin has reached the age where, everywhere we go, people ask her about school. Where does she go? Is she in kindergarten or pre-school? Where *will* she go? Lately, when the well-meaning public asks her when she's going to school, she throws her arms in the air and cackles a gleeful, "NEVER!" She occasionally appends a quietly thoughtful, "Unless I decide I want to." I usually get a curious look from the adult in question (the questioning adult?)... as if they think she's acting out and expect me to put her in line. Unless queried further, I usually just smile and nod.

Finn recently made friends with a younger toddler at the park. This young'un was rather shy and Finn had a hard time figuring out how to coax him into a more involved interaction. The successful solution? Pulling a slug out of the nearest buried irrigation valve box and thrusting it toward the other kid: "See? Slimy!"

We recently purchased Qwirkle, a board game sort of like Scrabble for people who aren't reading yet. It's actually quite a fun game which requires tactics and strategy... in other words, a nice change of pace from Candyland and Hi-Ho Cherry-O. The first few times through, it was a very cooperative game, in which we all saw everyone's tiles and I helped Larkin understand which moves were legal (and kept Finn from running off with all the orange tiles). Recently, Larkin has been wanting to play "properly," with tiles hidden from opponents, and rarely asks for help finding a move. One of these days, we might even keep score.

We just spent five minutes trying to show Larkin and Finn how I managed such a richly timbred (are you allowed to adjectify that?) vibrato when announcing that their cheese toast was ready.

When Finn fights bad guys and wants to make sure that they're *really* taken care of, he eats them.

We recently took the kids to the fair and enjoyed 6.5 hours of stomach-turning rides on top of corn dogs and frozen lemonade. We had an agreement about how much money we would spend there: the amount in our wallets. When I spent the last of my cash on game tickets, Larkin took her share and then suddenly got a very worried look on her face: "Oh no, have we paid for our house addition yet?"

Speaking of our house addition, today the kids and I delivered what was (hopefully) the last piece of paperwork to the County before they approve our building permit. If all goes well, we'll be out of here by June 1 so the roof can come off. AAAAGGH!

Addendum to Dentist Post

At some point, after the dentist has referred to me as "Mom" many many times, Larkin confided to him: "Her name is Jenny. That's what I call her so it would probably be okay if you did, too."

Prior to a conversation with the dentist about diet, Larkin and I talked about how the dentist might try to talk to me about the way she eats, rather than talking directly to her. She thought that was odd and it led into a kind of interesting discussion of parenting philosophy. She was somewhat shocked to discover that, in our culture, most kids don't have the freedom (luxury?) to eat whatever/whenever they want. After a moment's indignation, she announced: "You guys have the right way of having kids!"

It turned out to be a moot point since the dentist looked at her diet (we wrote down everything she ate for a week and when we brushed teeth) and proclaimed that any problems with her teeth must be genetic.

Dentist-Assisted Tooth Fairy Visit

Larkin had a tooth that was bothering her while we brushed her teeth, so we went off to the dentist to get it fixed. We were referred to a fabulous pediatric dentist who uses nitrous oxide with kids to help calm them so they don't have to go under general anesthesia for dental work (which is, apparently, a shockingly common practice). Larkin loves going to the dentist for cleaning, but this was the first time she had any actual work done, so I was a little leery of how the experience would go.

The tooth had apparently abscessed in a fairly magnificent way, so out it came. The moment the dentist came in, he started this horrible, patronizing constant patter about how beautiful, brave, etc. Larkin is. I cringed, Larkin ate it up. As he worked, and Larkin became more stoned from the nitrous, he talked about the bugs he was hunting down in her mouth and how brave she was as he hunted and on and on and Larkin never even realized that she got novocaine shots, a tooth pulled and another cavity filled as long as he was in there already.

Larkin had a bit of a hard time not being able to talk with all the paraphernalia in her mouth. She thanked the dentist for every compliment, causing him to add "very well-mannered" to his growing list of glowing attributes. At one point, the dentist told her that she was "the bravest person on this table," causing dental work to halt long enough for Larkin to reply: "Yeah, well, I'm also the *only* person on this table." The dentist claimed no one ever called him on that one, and thus "clever" was introduced into his patter.

I have some "full disclosure" issues when it comes to our kids... I had a very hard time not telling Larkin all about exactly what the procedure was and what would be happening when. In the end, I'm glad I bit my tongue... Larkin had some pretty serious dental work done and is excited to go back the next time. Hooray for inane, patronizing patter!

When faced with the dentist's Wall O' Bribes full of candy, cheap toys, toothbrushes, etc, Larkin chose a pair of sunglasses because she had recently lost hers.

Once she realized she had a tooth pulled, Larkin became very excited. We have a book called Throw Your Tooth on the Roof (Thanks, Alex!) which describes what different cultures traditionally do with lost teeth. I asked her what she wanted to do with her tooth. "I want the tooth fairy to bring money and candy... and I'm going to create quite a challenge for you guys by putting it under my dragon pillow's butt! I think you should get some candy for Finn, too, so he doesn't feel bad that I got something and he didn't." I love the way she embraces the magical while acknowledging the practical.

So the tooth fairy brought a dollar and a bag of her favorite (non-hippie) m&ms. The next morning, we were woken by the crinkling candy bag and a whispered, "I just wanted to thank you for getting my favorite m&ms... you guys are the best."

Later that morning, on the way to the park, Larkin was chatting in the car about all the wonderful things she could get with her dollar... and how would she ever choose... and how many of what could she buy with a dollar? After this had gone on for awhile, I realized (I suffer from a sometimes unforgivable obliviousness to consumer culture) that there is actually a store where everything costs a dollar! Once the kids understood the concept, we were off to the Dollar Tree (Larkin made sure that Finn could have a dollar, too, before deciding to go).

I was quite amused to discover that Larkin and Finn have very different shopping styles. Larkin wanted to look at *everything* in the store to see what was there, and then decide what to buy. Finn picked up everything that caught his eye and carried it around insisting that was what he wanted, then immediately rejected it for the next best thing. Finn (who spent the whole ride over talking about how he was going to get candy after I mentioned that was one of the things they would probably have in the store) went through an orange star balloon, a package of small squishy balls, a horse's head on a stick riding toy, a hard toy horse, a plastic gun, and probably a few other things before happily going home with an orange glow-in-the-dark sword. Larkin got a huge, foil, helium-filled butterfly balloon.

Then we had a lovely long morning at the park which ended a bit sooner than we would have liked when Finn slipped into the duck pond. Apparently, I have gotten lax about packing spare clothes in the car. Ah well.

Boredom

Larkin, in the car: "I don't think I've ever been bored a single minute in my whole life... in fact, I don't think I believe in the word."

The Birds And The Bees

One day, I was chatting with one of the volunteers at the Book Exchange who has a very active role in the lives of her grandchildren. She told me about a conversation she had with them about a family member who was going in to the hospital to have some blood tests done. Her 7-8 year old granddaughter wanted to know what the tests were for, but she didn't know. Her granddaughter concluded that it was "probably to find out if she's pregnant." She replied that those were usually urine tests, not blood tests. Her granddaughter's response was "oh, yeah... and that's how you get pregnant, too." She figured that, as a grandparent, that was not something she was compelled to address one way or the other.

Her story made me wonder how someone could get to that age without a clearer understanding of such things... and made me wonder what strange misconceptions (heh) were in my kids' heads. The very same day, I was reading a book with Larkin and Finn in which someone was described as "having no father." Larkin's response: "What does it mean she 'has no father'?! *Everyone* has a father... or at least some man willing to give up his sperm."

Apparently we crossed that bridge without ever even noticing it was there.

We've been having unseasonably chilly weather (don't worry, the sex talk is over) the last few weeks. We were sitting at the kitchen table, watching as the snow melted out of the trees:

Finn: "Snow falling out of trees?! What the hep?"
Larkin: "Heck, not hep."

While we were at the grocery store, Finn leaned out of the cart and sniffed me so ostentatiously that a fellow shopper actually asked him what I smelled like. His response: "Like a human!"