Navigating Christmas

It sounds fun and easy, doesn't it? Who doesn't have fond memories of waking up on Christmas morning, only to find that Santa really did come and he left you presents that you may have asked him for and some you only thought of? Who doesn't remember the excitement of new toys which last for, oh a few hours at least? Who wouldn't want to recreate those moments for their own offspring? Really, how hard can it be?

Okay so first off, remember now that you're carrying on a deception based on a conglomeration of Swedish, German and Macy Department store's traditions in which a fat, jolly man who usually lives on the North Pole flies around the world delivering presents to every single (good) child in a red and white suit with flying reindeer in a single night. And now you're trying to explain to a two and a half year old that this man comes down your chimney, fills an empty stocking and leaves presents, but somehow doesn't do it until she's asleep. "Why?" she asks, the typical two year old. At one point, early on, she surprised me and asked, "Is Santa Claus real?"

I said yes. I outright lied. I just didn't expect the question before the age of say, eight.

We got past the Santa Claus hurdle, only to be thrown into the melee of what the heck to buy the two year old who has everything and is used to "shopping" at the town's "Swap Shop" (i.e. the "dump"). Everything in the world contains batteries, educational DVDs and flashing lights. Everything else is toxic or made for ages 3 and up. What would she really play with? The traditional way of gathering info--asking your child what they asked Santa for-- wasn't yielding any information, since Sydney asked Santa for a Christmas Tree.

Stuffing the stocking became an issue; I hadn't bought enough stuffing. Recalling my stocking days I finally figured out why my stockings always contained fruit; they filled up the space nicely. Then it came time to wrap the presents... and wrap, and wrap, and wrap... it was 10:30 before we were done. Exhausted, we went to bed.

Predictably, when Sydney came downstairs to encounter the newly stuffed stocking and the presents under the tree, she didn't ask about Santa. She said, "Did somebody come here?"

All in all, the rest of the day went well, and Sydney was delighted with everything, most notably a Black & Decker toolset complete with hard hat, safety vest and goggles (goo goo goggles, she calls them). This morning she asked tentatively if her new presents were still here, as if she expected them to disappear with the Day. I told her they were and she went downstairs happily.

The Christmas Mystery; solved. Now, if only someone had told me that fingerpaints were so messy.... but that's a different story.

Have Toilet Seat, Will Travel

One of the unspoken secrets of parenthood is that toddlers are a source of unremitting hilarity.

Of course, you can't laugh at them, you'd give them a complex. Even when I laugh at one of Sydney's silly antics, something she is doing silly on purpose, she still asks me, "why are you laughing?" To laugh at her when she endeavors to offer her own serious opinion, or when she is stomping around in the kitchen in her "dancing dress" to Elvis Costello's "Red Shoes", or when she suddenly bursts into tears and declares she doesn't want the Christmas Tree because it isn't Christmas yet, would surely be classified as child abuse, so we spend alot of time with our hands over our mouths or with our backs turned, trying to hold in a serious case of the giggles.

And now we've got toilet humor. Sorry, folks.

Early in Sydney's potty training career, she was feeling confident enough one day to do the whole operation by herself. So without telling her father, she climbed up the stairs, went into the bathroom, took off her diaper, and climbed up onto the big potty, only to fall straight through the hole and ended up screaming her head off, whereupon Daddy found her half submerged, her shirt wet and her little arms trying to keep her butt out of the water. Talk about trying not to laugh in the face of serious crisis.

This incident has marked Sydney, so even though she is perfectly toilet trained she is afraid of the Toilet, i.e. the thing that grown ups sit on. She still insists that Daddy teach her to pee standing up, a request I am continuously vacillating on, on the one hand telling her that Daddy will teach her when she's six (an age I've placed a lot of arbitrary milestones on) and on the other telling her that girls pee sitting down. She countered the last one the other day by responding that she wants to be a boy.

"um," I said.

It's a frequent response of mine, these days. I mean really. What is the correct parental guidance response to a request for an early toddler sex change?

In any event, to combat the problem of the Big Evil Toilet, the only kind they ever have in shopping malls, gas stations, or restaurants, we've started carrying with us in place of the diaper bag a toddler's toilet seat.

So there I am, in a small Co-op with my hilarious sidekick, who is constantly chatting up a storm, running around the aisles, and generally making herself (and me) conspicuous to all the other shoppers, when she announces at the top of her lungs that she needs to poop. We get out the bag with the potty seat in it, rush to the bathroom, and get set up, whereupon she announces that actually she doesn't need to go. So we undo the operation and go back to our half filled shopping cart, where five minutes later she announces once again that she needs to poop. So we run back to the bathroom and this time we get something for our troubles. Thoroughly frazzled by now, I go back to my shopping, but Sydney is done, and she runs around and around screeching delightedly. I decide that I'd best be done too, so we go to the register and unload the wagon. Sydney puts on her Helpful Toddler Hat and decides she can push the wagon back to where we got it from, and starts pushing it in a random direction, heading toward a display of bananas. I'm in the middle of paying. "Honey," I say, in that distracted parental way, trying to keep one eye on her and one eye on the debit machine, "please be careful where you're going."

Sydney stops, stares at me, and then in her loudest, most incredulous voice, cries, "What!??"

Whereupon the cashier, the bagger, and half the store burst out laughing.

That's Sydney, my little comedian.

Toiletry

Saturday began like any other day. Sydney went down for her "nap"-- otherwise known as her private two hour sing-a-long, at around 2, and at around 4:30 I came back into the room to find her sitting on the bottom of the bed with a huge grin on her face.

"I didn't sleep!" was the first excited thing she said to me, and then the real kicker, "I'm not going to wear diapers anymore because I'm a big girl!"

"Really!" I said, conveniently responding to both statements. We dutifully got out of the diaper and into underwear (recycled and much too big), and when downstairs I asked her to repeat the last part so that Daddy could hear.

"I didn't sleep!" she said.

"No, the other part," I said.

We decided to take her at her word, though we were worried, for instance, when she and I went out for an hour to hike about looking for Christmas Trees, or when we went out for a third of the day to go shopping, or what would happen when she napped.

So far, she's done it almost perfectly.

So in honor of Sydney's new journey into the world of Toilets, you should read this link. Maybe Sydney knew it was momentous day after all.

Pop, Pop, and Away

We went to town today to gather a few items and also to buy a gift for a friend of Sydney's, just turning three. Sydney's favorite place to buy gifts; The Party Store.

When you go to the Party Store, you're really there to buy balloons. So we explained that one balloon would go to Sydney, the other, to her friend.

"Okay," Sydney said, and then promptly picked out a bright, cheery orange one for herself, and a somber black one for the birthday boy.

We intervened and picked out a purple Happy Birthday balloon, and handed them out to the clerk to be filled, whereupon the balloon became about the size of Sydney and three times as wide.

"Hon," my husband said to me, "Do you think we can fit that into the car?"

We then belatedly learned from the clerk that a balloon of that size would probably deflate in 4 or 5 hours. The birthday party would be the next day.

"Fortunately," the future salesman exclaimed, "for 35 cents extra we can add a substance called Hi Float, which will make the balloon last for 24 to 36 hours!"

We had already committed ourselves to the balloon. We agreed to fill two balloons with Hi Float.

Six dollars later, we were out of the store and trying to stuff them into the back of the car when one of the balloons popped suddenly. It was the bright cheery orange one.

"Uh oh," we muttered to each other. "What should we do?"

"Syd," my husband said a few seconds later, "your balloon popped."

"Oh," she said, disinterested. She was busy looking at the pavement.

"Is that okay?" he persisted.

"Yes," she said. She was on to something else entirely.

Relieved, we stuffed the remaining balloon into the back of the car and headed to our next errand, a drugstore. Somehow, Sydney found herself in the party section of that store (is party animalism genetic?) and shouted for joy. "Bayyoons!!" she cried, and promptly pulled down a mylar helium contraption with Dora the Explorer on it.

We were now 9 dollars into helium, ribbon, mylar and rubber.

We began to wend our way home with the new balloon, the birthday balloon and our various other errands stuffed into our small Prius, when we heard another explosion in the back. The big, Hi Float Happy Birthday balloon was gone.

Two balloons down. At least we still had Dora.

Who, true to her name, decided to set out Exploring when I opened the trunk during our next stop to change a diaper. Neither Sydney nor I witnessed Dora's silent escape from the car, but she was nowhere to be found when we got home.

Fortunately Sydney had bought a wooden secondhand train. "Your balloon is gone," I explained to her as we went into the house.

"Oh," she said, rolling her train on the floor.

The train was 2 dollars. And Sydney was happy. And that was all that really mattered.

Happy Halloween

I don't think that Sydney really understood the question. After all, the past two Halloweens she's been around for, her language skills were either undeveloped or largely absent. But in any,event, whenever we asked her, she stuck with her story.

We saw several ladybugs, a spider, a couple of Batmen, one Boba Fett, a million disney princesses, a few witches, a devil, and an infant dressed up as a carrot. There were also a few nondescript costumes, mostly teenagers, dressed up in that Just Give Me the Candy kind of way. It was a warm, though windy, Halloween, and everybody seemed to be having a good time.

Oh, what did Sydney want to be for Halloween?

Spinach.

Out In the World

Parenting is, on the one hand, a matter of subjective opinion, and everyone should have the right to raise their children as they see fit. On the other hand, being a parent is like being under a giant diplomatic microscope; a UN of patriotic, vitriolic, sympathetic procreators whose country of child is necessarily the center of the universe. Enter; the beach.

Sydney, myself, my husband, and his sister and her husband, all met up at the ocean front a few weekends ago. Although the beach in question has miles of relatively uninhabited areas in which to camp for the day, we uncharacteristically chose the most busy spot; next to the pier, the playground and the sandy beach. Sydney was ready to play, you see.

All around us were people and children of varying stages of life and varying stages of beach dress; from the almost-nothing string bikini to the full veil of the modest Muslim. They were also from all different walks and views of life, as evidenced in the many encounters we had.

It's these encounters with perfect strangers, whose children interact with mine, which is the sticky point where diplomacy might break down. Sydney met up with a girl named Katherine, a cute princess of a three year old who seemed friendly enough until Sydney picked up some seaweed.

"Eww!" Katherine said, "I don't want it!!" Katherine's parents had obviously taught Katherine the dangers of the wild outdoors. Sydney, on the other hand, has never seen a slimy green thing she didn't like.

Ignoring the outburst, Sydney gave it to me. "Whatz dis?" she asked.

"Seaweed," I said.

While Katherine was still inching back closer to her new friend, Sydney asked, curiously, "Can I eat it?"

Seriously. What could make a mother prouder?

Later, as I was enjoying a nice dive in the cold Atlantic, I noticed a recently dead but mostly intact crab floating in the waves. I showed it to my sister in law, and then noticed that Sydney was still engaged with Katherine. "I'm going to go freak Katherine out," I said, and hurried to shore to cause diplomatic havoc.

Later, I felt a little bad. Was I dooming my daughter to a life without friends? But on the other hand, she has plenty of friends. She immediately named her new crab friend "Jeebo." Who needs a Katherine when you have a crab?

Y?

Sydney, you can't eat dirt. Don't eat dirt.

Why?

Because it isn't good for you.

Why?

Because it isn't food.

Why?

Because dirt isn't food.

Why?

Because it isn't.

Why?

Just because.

Why?

I don't know.

.....

Why?

Sorting Reality from Fiction

"A boy hit his head with a bottle!" Sydney declared, a few days ago, apropos of nothing, "but he okay kapuz his friend pick him up."

"Oh, I see," I said, trying to process a) what she was talking about and b) where she'd witnessed such an event. These days I have to navigate carefully through these statements to get at what she's really talking about. If I ask directly, she'll reply, "Stop talking to me!" and then she'll end the conversation and I'll be no wiser. So I try to sort it out in a round about way.

"Did you see this on the computer?" Maybe it was a Sesame Street scene?

"No," she said.

I tried a different tactic. "What was the boy wearing?"

"A jacket and a coat," she said, emphatically, and then she moved on to another subject. "You a BOY!! How you doin? It's so nice to see you!!"

Maybe she dreamt it. Maybe it was part of a conversation. Maybe she made it up.

Maybe, I don't want to know.

Kapuz

I make up stories and I make up games and I immediately regret it because whatever I invent we'll play for days on end. Take, for instance, Whappowong, which is when you suddenly flop down on the grass with your legs in the air and then you drop the legs suddenly--wong-- which is very funny and also, it turns out, funny on the twenty or ninetieth try.

I made up a talking hand puppet when Sydney was 9 or 10 months old called Tickle Monster. Then I made up another one called Cousin Tickle Monster. Some days, Sydney will only talk to Tickle Monster or Cousin Tickle Monster and not to me. Somehow she trusts them, even though they often tickle her instead of answering questions. "Hi Tickle Monster! How you doin'?" she'll say, looking directly at my curled up hand. "I'm good, Syd, how are you?" I'll say in my normal non-Tickle-Monster voice. "NO TALK! Just Tickle Monster!" she'll tell me. Sigh. I used to be so much more than just a hand.

Sydney's favorite joke is to call me a boy. "You a BOY!!" she'll yell joyfully. Recently she's been told that actually her mother is a woman. "You a WOMAN!!" she'll yell at her father, generally in a particularly crowded grocery store.

She's starting to rationalize things too. The other day she told me that she couldn't sit on the potty "kapuz it pinch me."

"It.. what?"

"Kapuz it pinch me!"

"Kapuz?"

"You don' unnerstann!" she said, sorrowfully, an expression I've used often to let her know that I'm trying to figure out what she's saying, but don't quite get it yet.

"Say it again, I'll understand this time," I said, helpfully, hoping it was true.

"No potty, kapuz it pinch me!" she said, impatiently.

"OH! Because it pinched you! I see..." it had pinched her the other day, accidentally. I let her know I fixed the potty and all was well, and we went on to our customary "I don't half to be brave" which means that she won't get a "soap bath" tonight and won't have to endure the agony of getting her hair washed.

Kapuz we all know how bad that is. Just, you know, kapuz.

I See France

Sydney hasn't seen her favorite aunt for a month. But she loves to talk to her on the phone and tell her all the important things going on; usually those things are right in front of her, so the conversation is a little disjointed. Today, however, she proudly announced to her aunt:

"I'm wearing blue underwear!"

She was, too.

Storytelling

Out of the blue, Sydney will suddenly feel compelled to tell you her favorite story. It goes like this:

"Watching a tree fall down, go BOOM! in da trunk uv da maple. But da maple okay. An' mommy pull da comealong, and daddy pull da comealong too. An' daddy cut it up in pieces an 'they go in the fire."

That pretty much sums up our entire existence, with side ventures into blueberry orchards and vegetable gardens and our new venture, chickens. Sydney hears about our need for wood all the time, and she hears the chainsaw, but the felling of this one particular tree--which hit a maple we were trying to save but didn't end up ultimately hurting it-- made a huge impression.

The story makes a bigger impression on us. Those are full sentences she's saying there. Where the heck did those come from?

Happy Birthday, Too

Sydney's gotten into this bad habit of repeating things; so here we are. Our officially two year old daughter can count to ten (1...2...3....6!...6!...6!...7...8...9..10!) and recite the alphabet (A...B...C...D...4!.....4!....4!) and she can tell you what color things are (usually, they are blue), she can wash her hands and put on her slippers "all by self" as well as remove all the keys from my laptop's keyboard, and in generally she's turning into a fairly active, curious and energetic kid.

Happy Birthday, you silly little girl!

ECHOechoecho

Or maybe there's a parrot in the house.

On Saturday we moved the wood splitter from the garage to the open sun so I could see what I was doing as I changed the oil and tried to get the crotchedy thing started. My husband took his chain saw and announced that he would cut down a tree that I had refused to help him with, stating firmly that it was entirely too close to the power lines and I wanted nothing to do with it. He was feeling confident--or cocky-- and announced he needed no help from me. Off he went, leaving me to my task--and to Sydney, of course.

The %$#@*^!! thing wouldn't start, and I couldn't find any of our tools, and as I struggled to remove the spark plug I was muttering under my breath all sorts of four-letter words, which Sydney immediately picked up on and said over and over at the top of her lungs. Fortunately that's when I heard the tree topple and looked up to see the power lines flailing hugely up and down, to which I stopped my cursing and said to Sydney: "Daddy hit the lines!"

We watched the lines with some dismay until they stopped their oscillation, and I ran into the house briefly to make sure we still had power. When I returned, Sydney was repeating over and over excitedly: "Daddy hit the lines! Daddy hit the lines! Daddy hit the lines!"

Soaking it all up, she is. But she's not sure how to spit it all back out. So for the past few days her sentences have been full of curse words, demands, song snippets and random sentences, so at any one time one might hear: "Water! Bear, sit down. %#@%*$!! Mary had a little lamb, laugh and play, Daddy hit the lines!"

I can see why some people jokingly say that once they start talking, you'd wish they'd shut up. It's not that you don't want to hear what they're saying. It's that you have no idea what they're talking about.

Life in the Toddler Lane

For the most part, my life was pretty stable and predictable before I had a kid. I knew, for instance, that my keys were in my bag, that my hair brush was somewhere in the bathroom, that my shoes would remain empty until I chose to put my feet in them. These days things are not so predictable. I have no idea where my keys are, my hairbrush could be anywhere in the house and my shoes often have various pieces of detritus in them, including but not limited to: pieces of bark, small toys, coins, tissue paper, or baby socks.

This morning I stumbled into the bathroom to discover two cardboard tubes scattered on the floor. Last night I apparently slept with a dragon finger-puppet, which I discovered under my pillow when my own hand finally crept under there. I had our accountant's calling card safely tucked into my backpack, but I found it the other day among a recently re-arranged tupperware drawer. I just never know what might be hiding under the tablecloth or floating in the toilet. Who knows what has been thrown away in the trash can or tucked away somewhere safe.

Well, Sydney knows. But she doesn't necessarily think these things are important to tell you.

The Princess and the Pee

"I farted!" my angelic, sweet-faced grinning daughter yelled out. "I farted!" she said again, and to forestall a broken record repeating of the two words which will occur if I don't answer, I replied, "yes! Yes, you did!"

Actually I had no idea if she had or not, so I had to take her word for it, like I have to take her at her word when she looks me in the eye and says the following key words:

"diaper!"
"poop!"
"pee!"

Sometimes she means it, and sometimes she doesn't. Or possibly she's getting pee and poop mixed up, or maybe she gets the poop and the farting mixed up, or maybe she's just telling me that she's wearing a diaper, or that a few hours ago she pooped, or perhaps she's telling me that she knows what poop is, or maybe, she's just saying words. It's hard to tell these days.

In any event, we've hopped onto the potty train.

So far, nothing has come of it. Except that this morning she told me that the potty was cold and then refused to sit on it, preferring instead to squat in front of it, which is not, ideally, in the end what we're striving for.

I told her father this story and this evening he decided that if the potty was cold then by golly we'd have to warm it up. So he took a heated wash cloth and wiped the thing down, and lo and behold our princess did indeed sit on the throne.

No pee came of it. But I'm sure it's only a matter of time, as long as we can keep the seat warm.

Nice Hot Bowl Wa-Wa

We were fresh out of swim class, walking at the head of a crowd of people leaving the Y, and I was negotiating with Sydney.

"Mo hop-hops" she said.
I shook my head, "No, no more hop-hops until we get to the car."
"Car," Sydney said, "No hop-hops, car."
"What are hop-hops?" The woman behind me finally had to ask.

Busted!

Hop-hops are, of course, what Sydney calls bunnies, because she knows they hop, I suppose, and she and I were actually talking about Annies Bunny Grahams, which are kind of like your traditional Animal Cracker except they are all bunnies. So I had to explain to the woman that my daughter was actually talking about eating bunnies, which sounded terrible when you explained it in adult English. At least she wasn't sitting at our dinner table, listening to Sydney expound upon her love of baa-baa while eating lamb.

We'd recently heard from a child expert that not using the correct word for whatever the child says when speaking back to them is bad for language development. That means when Sydney announces that she wants wa-wa I should promptly say "water" back to her, and I should definitely not fall into the trap of referring to bunnies as "hop-hops." But on the other hand, what is language development after all but the ability to aptly express yourself? Why shouldn't I start referring to our mouthwash as "teeth juice?" Or to soup as "bowl wa-wa?" Or to the act of plowing snow as "mommy push snow?" Maybe Sydney just isn't as hide-bound, language-wise, as the rest of us. Maybe toddlers don't develop language so much as craft it.

Bowl wa-wa, by the way, is a simple meal which can be cooked up right at the dinner table. All you need is a bowl, some water, and some dinner. First you pour the water into the bowl. Then you put select pieces of dinner in the bowl. Then you mash it around with your hand. Then you drink it. If you have hop-hops and baa-baa at the same time, you might just be in toddler heaven. Or as Sydney might put it, in "baby up-high".

And Yes means Yes

At 21 months, we're embarking on 2, and we all know the Terrible Twos.

Here's a sampling:

The game of Chase Me: Chase Me is excellent exercise, for child and parent alike, and consists, at least at the moment, of going round and round the dining room table or, if we're really ambitious and rambunctious, the circuit we can make by going through the kitchen to the living room through the hall to the dining room and back through the kitchen. The game is necessarily accompanied by the panicky giggle from the 21 month old and the phrase "I'm gonna get you" from the chasing parent.

Chase Me is also employed when about to do something you might not want to do, such as getting dressed or going to bed.

No: The word no is increasingly employed by both parent and child to mean things we shouldn't do (No climbing on the radiator) or things we don't want to do (no brush!) or things we're not going to do right now (No car today) or things we're not going to have anymore (no more juice). No is also a word ignored increasingly by both parties, to the point where my husband, in one frustrating moment, told Sydney sternly, "No means no!" She has taken this to heart, repeating it endlessly back to us so that we understand too: "nomeanno! nomeanno! nomeanno!" Of course she's right. In a fair world, her "no" would mean no, too. Someday soon, maybe, Dad will be forced to tell her: "yeah, well, life's not fair." Hopefully that won't be until we reach the Terrible Teens.

Smiling: Yes, Virginia, being cute and having an adorable smile will get you everything in the end. This girl has a mind of her own, a head of blond hair and the smile of an angel. Watch out, world. Here she comes.

Errant Xylophones

"Nysh!" Sydney says, pointing to the swords we have hanging on the wall or to the cucumber she wants cut up smaller. "Nysh!" she says when she sticks her hand under the water, when it is that rare just right temperature that is neither hot nor cold. "Daddee! Nysh!" she says with a definitive nod of her head, which either means "Daddy is nice" or "Daddy is a knife." We assume the former.

Language has always been a confusing mishmash for me, one of the reasons I have stuck with my primary and only tongue, English, although my fluency in this particularly confusing grammatical structure is probably a fine accomplishment, given the sheer number of rules and exceptions we have to play with. Not to mention the further down the alphabet you go, the less examples of viable words you have.

Take, for instance, the letter X.

Sydney has started to take an interest in her blocks. She has moved past the knock them down, stack them up stage and has moved to the pictures, numbers and letters represented on each of the six sides. Some of the blocks are thoughtfully arranged so that the letter represents a word represents a picture, and thus we have our lesson in language while striving to play. For a while the game is easy enough. "A" is for apple, "B" is for basket... but then you get to "X" and what do you do now? What super 21 month old can get their tongue around the word "xylophone", not to mention trying to explain what it is?

This particular block set tried to represent x-ray, with mixed results:

"X!" I say, turning the block around to reveal the big X and the small x. Then "X is for xray..." and then turning it around again to the picture side, which shows a kid with a blackened middle and bones for a belly, at which point I say "and this is a...."

"Boy!" Sydney gamely says, going for the most obvious portion of the picture and conveniently ignoring the "x" part.

.."Yes," I say, "x is for... boy." How am I really supposed to explain the concept of a machine which can see your bones? She doesn't even know she has bones.