The Car Seat: And Then There's Reality

Recently a carpooling situation has been introduced into our daily routine, which relieves us, in theory, of multiple trips back and forth to Sydney's pre-school.  My husband brings Sydney, her schoolmate, and Lauren (by default) to the school, and then her schoolmate's mother brings Sydney and her son back to her house, where I will pick her up on my way home.  This arrangement works well, in theory. 

But in order to accomplish this, a rotating saga of carseats must occur.  A third carseat must somehow be inserted between the first two car seats of the car, since  Children Can Be Seriously Hurt Or Injured by the Passenger Side AirBag!! Children are ALWAYS Safer in the BackSeat!! 

It is nearly impossible to put this third car seat into the car without going through major bodily contortions, and it is completely impossible to do it within fifteen minutes.     Add to that the other two car seats were recently removed from the car because Sydney and her sister went somewhere with Grandma the other day, and we can all be pretty much assured that something, somewhere, is going to be buckled in either haphazardly or possibly not all.  The end result is three most likely "improperly" installed car seats and a possy of parents who are now exceedingly late to their destinations. 

The LATCH system?  Well one car has it and one car does not, and anyone who thinks this finger pinching system is easier than the seatbelt contortion is high on drugs anyway... but when you're dealing with multiple people trying to install carseats in multiple different cars you don't add multiple different ways to install them.  So we only use the seatbelts.  Which means there's this large metal object dangling from all three car seats, ready to smash someone on the head in the event of an accident, and also a whole group of child car seat safety experts shaking their heads in disbelief.

A recent study shows that most car seats are installed incorrectly.  The study tries to fault lack of awareness, but that's not it at all.  I'm perfectly aware that our hurried installation of merry-go-round car seats are likely lacking in some way.  Sometimes I discover they're not installed at all, due to a miscommunication from Party A with Party B.  It's a lack of time and resources, also a very real lack of safety features in the car itself.  Here's the thing, corporate America, I shouldn't have to buy separate pieces of equipment to keep my children safe in your car.  Your car should be made safe for my children.  My 1 1/2 year old should not have to ride backwards with her feet scrunched up against the ill-fitting back seat for another three years because we can't be bothered to make a back car seat which can comfortably and safely accomodate her.   And I should be able to fit three children into the back seat without spending half an hour installing car seats badly or, alternatively, buying 16 car seats and a minivan.

You know, sure, on paper, we should all slow down, relax, make sure that all our t's are crossed and our i's dotted before setting out on any adventure.  We should all brush our teeth daily, eat a good breakfast, exercise for fifteen minutes, sleep 8 hours a night, get a little me time in there somewhere and make sure our children's car seats are installed properly by stopping by our local police station and having them double check our installation (which in our situation would be several times a day).  Yeah, doesn't that seem properly reasonable?  Except we all slept late, we're out of milk, I can't find one of my running shoes, I stayed up late last night doing laundry, I'm not sure when I last had a free moment and all three car seats are outside on the driveway soaking in the morning dew.  Oh, and our friendly local police only work part time.  Also, we're already half an hour late and the car needs gas.  What do you think is going to happen?

Lipstick on a Pig

Sydney came home one day with a picture of a dinosaur she had drawn during one of her outings—the library or preschool, I don’t remember which. It was a girl dinosaur, she informed me, because it was wearing lipstick.

Uh oh. Gender minefield, my brain said.

See… I don’t wear lipstick. Or eyeshadow. Or blush, or nail polish, or any of the other body painting items that I presume 90% of my fellow women use. I don’t even own these items, nor have I ever understood how or why I would use them. Furthermore, most of my stockings get used for practical things like sucking up unwanted ladybugs in the vaccum in the winter or shoring up tomato-laden plants in the summer. I own a few dresses but rarely wear them, all of my shoes are comfortable and usually scuffed up, my regular jewelry consists of one plain gold wedding ring, and basically I’m lucky if I manage to put all of my clothes on right side in and get to work without spilling something on them in the morning. In short, I don’t get the whole feminine body image thing. I don’t even think about it.

Add to that the inherent stereotypes created by a society which assumes that “lipstick is for girls, trucks are for boys” and my need to create for my daughters a caring and open childhood free of added burdens simply because of their physical sex while at the time time not dooming them to freakdom and ridicule by their less open minded peers and parents, not to mention trying to explain (for example) the symbols on the bathroom door for practical purposes such as not going into the wrong toilet by mistake, and what exactly do I say? Clearly, an older person or a peer informed Sydney about the lipstick=girls connection. And since Sydney’s mother doesn’t have or wear lipstick, that part probably had to be explained too. And now here I come along, bent on undoing Sydney’s developing understanding of why her dinosaur is a girl.

But on the other hand… what if she wants to be the icon of feminity when she gets older? Who am I to impose my own views of gender on her? I certainly don’t want to limit her possibilities just because I happen to be an unrepentant thirty-something tomboy with a penchant for motorcycles and excavators and no fashion sense at all. What if she’s destined to design the next Ralph Laurenesque line?

And what will happen when she does start toeing the line in the makeup department? How will she interpret her mother’s complete lack of competence in this arena? Where will she learn to wear lipstick and eyeshadow and what purse to carry in the fall if not from me?

All this was going through my head as I finally said, carefully: “Boys can wear lipstick too, you know. And I don’t wear lipstick, and I’m a girl.”

To which she replied: “But mommy… you do wear lipstick! You put it on whenever your lips get dry!” Proving that even though she is out in the world she still sees the world largely through the actions of her own parents. I do indeed wear Chapstick, mostly in the winter, and so does Daddy, so we decided it was still a girl dinosaur but her lips were dry which was why she was wearing chapstick/lipstick.

With that settled, Sydney rattled the picture in my face. “ROAR!!!” she said.

Phew. Dodged a bullet. May she think Chapstick and Lipstick are the same thing for many years to come.

Royal Arguments

In the ever growing, complicated saga that is Sydney’s daily existence, there are times when she is reprimanded and feels maligned by the process. Which is to say, most of the time.

Sydney doesn’t like to be caught doing something wrong, be told what she is doing is not nice, or find out that what she thought was right was actually wrong, which bodes well for her future behavior, I suppose, but makes the whole process convoluted and drawn out in the moment. Take for instance this exchange, in which I had just reprimanded Sydney for yelling at me while I was in the midst of talking to someone else:

“Mommy! I have to tell you something.”
“What, honey?”
“When superheroes are serious to princesses, they fight.”

Possibly in retrospect, I should have realized that this matter of fact statement had already been discussed and agreed to during the day by Daddy and Sydney. Apparently the agreement was that princesses and superheroes are equal, but when they are serious with each other it sometimes leads to fighting, which is why she assumed that I had gotten mad at her for yelling at me. But I didn’t know that at the time, and assumed that what Sydney was trying to tell me was that a) I was a superhero but I was being mean b) that she was a princess and therefore people couldn’t tell her what to do and c) she didn’t want to fight. Apparently I was wrong on all counts, so the conversation rapidly went downhill:

“Well, I can be serious to princesses.”
“No! Because princesses don’t like it when people are serious!”
I don’t even know where this princess thing came from, but I wasn’t buying it. “Well, princesses have to be strong which means they can’t cry when people are serious with them.”
“Why?”
“Princesses have to rule the country, right?”
“Well, I’m the ruler! And I don’t want you to be serious!!”
“Honey, I have to be serious with you sometimes when you yell at me for no reason.”
“I said I was sorry!!! I’m going to my room for 55 hours and I’m never coming back!!”

At this point, a seriously over-dramatic Sydney mopes slowly out of the living room – or stomps madly, depending on the circumstance, but reappears well before 55 hours are up with a sad expression on her face.

“What’s up, honey?”
“You shouldn’t be serious with princesses!”
“Honey—“ where’s the fast-forward button? – “Honey, I will always be serious with you when you yell at me.”
“But when superheroes are serious to princesses, they fight!!”
“Well I don’t think they should fight at all!”
“DADDYYY!!!”

After many tears and sobs and a version of the story that in no way matches mine, Daddy finally comes in to clear up the matter between the two of us. Apparently, superheroes and princesses need some kind of moderator when they start to fight. I’m not sure who won the final negotiation, but at last we reached a compromise:

“Honey… what will make you feel better?”
“You have to tickle me.”

That, I can do.

To Sydney on her 4th Birthday

When you were born I had no idea what to expect in the years to come. And up until now, though you outgrew your baby clothes and started walking and talking and eating real food, you were still our first little baby. But the other day you showed up nonchalantly at the sugar house, having walked down the snowy, wooded trail all by yourself, and you thought nothing of it. I, on the other hand, was completely thunderstruck.

Actually, you’re doing that a lot to me, nowadays. Instead of the scribbles and fanciful colors upon the bottoms of which your teachers have dutifully translated what the picture is for us, you’re actually drawing yellow suns and red houses and birds with wings in their relatively correct places. You wrote your name, in recognizable letters and in fairly recognizable order the other day, although the E had a few extra lines in it for good measure and a few of the letters were backwards and one was over in the corner of the page by itself. I’m not saying you’re all grown up, but you’re definitely not an infant, a toddler, a three year old anymore.

You can help out now, and not in the way that your little sister “helps out” by removing all the tupperware from the drawers and scattering it all over the kitchen, or the way you once helped Mommy and Daddy “put the corn to sleep” which involved pulling out the corn plants, laying them on their sides and covering the whole thing over with dirt and then patting them hard (we didn’t have a very good corn patch that year). When asked to bring knives and forks to the table, you take them courteously and you put them right where they are supposed to be. You’ll entertain your sister for awhile so that one of us can make dinner. And you’ll relay messages between parents, although not always with the necessary accuracy (“Honey, Syd says that you said to tell me the washing machine is burning up? I’m sorry, can you explain that again?”) You’re growing into a pretty reliable, well-adjusted kid.

That’s not to say you aren’t still hilarious. At your birthday circle at pre-school, I arrived to find you in crown and cape, and the teacher informed me that Sydney had taken a “birthday vacation” and left Prince Charming to stand in her stead. Super Prince Charming, to be exact, not to be confused with Buzz Lightyear, Mighty Mouse, Super Dorothy, Tin Woman, Emergency Buzz (for those times when you don’t have time to say “to Infinity and Beyond!”) or Super Max. It becomes a bit of a challenge, at times, to keep up with you, especially when you announce out of the blue that you need oil (Tin Woman drinks oil, you see. Because water makes her rust.) or that I have to take off your spacesuit before you can get into the bathtub. But once I do catch up it’s just a pure pleasure to immerse myself in your world, for all its chaotic, illogical orderliness.

The most amazing thing about you growing up is that it turns out that I am growing up too. Now that I find myself having to concentrate through a haze of conflicting conversations between Daddy and Mommy, Daddy and Sydney, Sydney and Mommy and Sydney Talking To Herself, or trying to drive in a straight line while also trying to right a suddenly up ended water container, I’m a lot more sympathetic. Patience has become my middle name. Trying to come up with definitive answers to seemingly obvious questions such as “how do they make light bulbs?” has made me realize that I really don’t know all that much and that what I do know isn’t really black and white. Most of all I’ve learned that you cannot cook the best steak in the world at the same time that you are trying to prevent your almost 1 year old from climbing up the stairs and your 4 year old from writing on the walls. Multi-tasking means compromising at best.

So, Sydney, we’ve made it to four. In another four years, you’ll be eight. In 4 times 4, you’ll be learning to drive. And 4 after that you’ll be out on your own. But that’s a lot of fours down the road.

A Majiggy

The other day Sydney found her long lost Wiki Sticks (or is that "stix") in the bottom of the toy box, and she was so grateful that she decided to be generous. After finally managing to unravel the sticky, colorful ball, she told me that before I went to work she would make me something.

"Great, honey," I said vaguely, rushing around and as usual late for work. As promised, a little while later she held out a Wiki Sticks conglomeration vaguely amoeba shaped, and told me I should keep it on my desk at work.

"Thanks honey," I said, holding out my hand for my gift. "....what is it?"

"A thing," Sydney said, who had already embarked on a completely different project involving scissors and playdough.

"What kind of a thing?" I persisted, because heaven forbid six months from now I call it an amoeba and it turns out it is really higher on the evolutionary timetable, say a dinosaur, or a cow, or Buzz Lightyear.

"It's a majiggy," she said absently.

And so I went to work and placed on my desk a genuine Thing, A Majiggy.

All in a Name

A few months ago Sydney saw a homegrown, musical variation on the Wizard of Oz. Ever since she has incorporated pieces and parts of the story into her play; the wizard, Toto, the witch, the lion, scarecrow and tin man. She has also been watching a good deal of Sesame Street, and has attached herself to the idea of SuperHeroes, mainly in the person of Super Grover. All was well until one day she insisted to me that her name wasn't Sydney anymore.

It was Dorothy.

Super Dorothy, to be specific.

Super Dorothy and Super Grover fly around saving people, sometimes with liberal doses of help from the witch, the wizard or Abby Cadabby. This super hero game can go on for hours and is never ever boring, I guess, since when we finally decide that we have to do something else, like wash dishes for example, minor catastrophes ensue which prevent us from leaving SuperHero world just then.

Sydney had insisted so many times that she had changed her name to Dorothy that I was beginning to despair of ever calling her by name again when we watched Toy Story and Toy Story II over the holidays, and she stopped insisting her name was Dorothy.

"am beyond!! PHHIISHH!" she hollers as she sticks her arms out straight and prepares to save people in her new iteration.

"My name isn't Sydney!" she insists, "it's Buzz LightYear!!"

To infinity. And beyond. At least we're going somewhere.

What Lies Beneath

Sydney's a good kid in general but for some reason she has an oral fixation with paper. She'll tear off a little piece of her tissue, ball it up in her hands, and place it tenderly in her mouth, savoring God knows what chemical flavoring and artificial texture before being told sternly by her parents, once more, that we only put food in our mouths, and paper is not food.

Sydney now knows emphatically that her parents think that paper is not food but she herself apparently begs to differ, and in order to indulge her secret fondness for paper she employs various strategies, with varying degrees of success. She's tried to reason with us. "Stop talking," she'll say. Or "go away." She's tried distraction. She's tried going in the bathroom and closing the door. None of these strategies have yielded the desired results, and so yesterday she tried something new.

She tried an outright lie.

The conversation started out normally enough: "Sydney, what is in your mouth?"

But rapidly went south: "Cereal," she said. And then she swallowed the evidence.

"Cereal? Where did you get it?"

"It was on the floor."

Right away she realized that was the wrong answer, because although cereal is food, she has been told that when cereal is on the floor you don't eat it. Which she is promptly told. So she changes her story.

"I got it from the box."

"What box? Is there a box of cereal on the table?"

There is not and Sydney knows this, so again she thinks quickly and comes up with: "No, I got it from the cabinet."

Since the cabinet in question is about six feet off the floor and impeded by a kitchen counter, I had serious doubts about this story.

"Really? How did you get it?"

Sydney has now realized that she can't account for this. So she is silent.

Even though I found the attempt hilariously funny, I somehow managed to keep a straight (and stern) face and reprimanded her for lying to me. Having been caught in such a bald faced lie, and being the good kid that she is, she immediately crumpled in a puddle of tears and promised not to do it again.

Which she won't. She'll definitely tell a better lie next time. Here we go.

Tongue Twist

Witnessed just now:

Dad: "Sydney, what's in your mouth?"

Sydney: "Just, go away." Waves Daddy away.

Dad: "Sydney. What's in your mouth? Is that plastic?"

Sydney: "Stop talking."

Dad: "Sydney, don't put plastic in your mouth."

Sydney: "It's not IN my mouth. It's ON my mouth."

Dad: "Well don't put it on your mouth."

Sydney: "But it's my extra tongue!"

Dad: "What...?"

Sydney: "I have to put it on my mouth, it's my extra tongue!"

Dad: "....Can't you pretend your extra tongue is somewhere else?"

Sydney: "NOOOOOOO!"

Dad: "Well, I'm sorry, but its dirty so you can't do that."

Sydney: "What if I wash it off?"

Dad: "...okay."

What a three year old has to go through just to have an extra tongue!

Mekkers

Daddy and Sydney were sitting on the floor looking at a picture of the solar system. I expect the concept of other planets is a little out of her reach but she was gamely trying.



"See?" Daddy said, pointing at the various colorful spheres, "there's Mars and Venus, Earth, Saturn, Neptune..."



"..and Scotland!" Sydney exclaimed excitedly.



My maternal grandmother was Scottish. She did say she'd travelled a long way to get to America.

Just as Sydney is gamely trying to understand her world, we're gamely trying to keep up with her. The other day we told her it was time to go to bed when she told us she wanted to play a "short mekkers."

"What's 'mekkers?'" we asked.

"It's a game," Sydney said, and proceeded to bend over with her head on the floor and one leg in the air. This was how you played mekkers. Easy enough.

Yesterday I found my husband lying on the ground in the driveway while Sydney piled hay on top of him.

"What are you guys doing?" I asked.

My husband looked up at me wearily. "We're playing a long mekkers."

Oh. Mekkers is that kind of game. I see.

Y Knots

Things have gotten a little more complicated these days with the introduction of a new arrival. We have suddenly become the show stopper at every venue; restaurants, shoppng plazas, libraries--wherever we ventured so happily as a threesome before has become a veritable clan of look-alikes, albeit in various stages of maturity.

This explains, in part, why there is a stick taped to our sliding glass door and a plastic bag attached to one of our dining room chairs.

And it's the only explanation you're likely to get.

Meanwhile, Sydney has reacted to her new status by becoming Three with a capital T, conveniently ignoring requests she would rather not deal with, refusing foods she used to eat with gusto, and bursting into uncontrollable tears at the merest misstep by her over-tired parents, and instead of punctuating every response with a rhetorical why? has progressed into the more challenging question, why not?

e.g.

"Syd, please don't put dirt into the baby's bouncy seat..."

"Why not??"

It's all fun and games, here.

Mermaid Salad

Being three apparently has a lot of advantages I hadn't thought of before. We were at the dinner table the other day eating ham, which Mommy and Daddy were enjoying with a spot of mustard and a little horseradish, when Sydney insisted that she also needed to have some mustard and horseradish. Leaning on our past experiences with this child we were pretty sure that she didn't like either, and told her so.

"Three year olds like mustard," she said. And they do. They like horseradish too, it turns out. Plain, with no ham to interfere.

So my little gourmand came into the kitchen with her toy elephant last night explaining that she and the elephant were hungry and they wanted to go to a restaurant.

"Okay," I said, playing the role of the waiter, "what do you and the elephant want?"

"I want a peanut butter and samwich," she said, clearly, "and the elephant wants mermaid salad."

Don't blink, I thought, and said, "Does he want a mermaid salad sandwich or just mermaid salad?"

"Just mermaid salad, please."

So Sydney had a peanut butter sandwich and the elephant ate his mermaid salad.

A little while later she came up to me and asked: "Excuse me, how do you make mermaid salad?"

I have no idea. "First," I said confidently, "you catch some mermaids."

"Yeah?"

"Then you cut the tails off."

"Why?"

"Because that's the part you eat. Then you cook them for 35 minutes, and you put them in a big bowl."

"Yeah?"

"And then you add mayonnaise, onions, celery, pepper and salt." Essentially I have just subsituted mermaid for tuna. Yummy.

"Oh!" Sydney said, "My elephant is still hungry. Can he have some more?" And off she went with more mermaid salad for her elephant.

But what have I done? Is she going to traumatize some little girl with a Little Mermaid t-shirt by making yum yum noises at it? Is she going to ask her pre-school teachers if they can make mermaid salad? Have I altered my daughter's experience with half-fish, half-human mythological creatures for life? Or is she really just skipping all that and admitting that all they may be good for is a substitute for tuna salad?

I wish I was three... I'd probably know the answer.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum

Sydney's powers of reasoning have sky-rocketed over the past few weeks. Today she reasoned that, when asked what her grandmother said and her grandmother replied, "I didn't say anything," that it must mean that her grandmother's mouth was stuck up with glue. There are a few gaps in this reasoning, to be sure, but it's not bad for a first try.

When I was in college I took a logic course with the specific goal of being able to reason nonsense in such a fashion that no one could argue with me. This same desire may have been passed down to my daughter who the other day very sanely reasoned that soap was made of rubber. Observe:

1. Wild rice is yummy.
2. It is yummy because it tastes good and also because it has a neat texture.
3. The texture of wild rice is slippery, crunchy and a little rubbery.
4. Soap is slippery.
5. Therefore, soap is made out of rubber.

Obviously.

Third Time a Charm

Now fully versed in English and with a long memory, Sydney got exactly what she wanted for her birthday: a chocolate cake, vanilla frosting and chocolate (no, wait, I want vanilla) ice cream. She also had: three red balloons, a single candle with a three on it, a bunch of daffodils, a hat and a sweater, a veterinary kit, a craft table, play doh, a book of Curious George, a bubble maker, and a guitar.

Not a bad haul for a three year old.

She also definitely has the birthday, now-I'm-a-year-older concept down. This morning she told me she was still three. And that next year, she would be sixty.

From three to sixty in one year? The way time speeds up around here, I don't doubt it.

Building the Girl

Since we live on a farm, Sydney is exposed to probably more adventures than your average three year old, just by being at home. Last year she acquired a toy chainsaw and she can frequently be seen working along side Daddy or Mommy, cutting up sticks, grass, snow banks or whatever else gets in the way. Ever since Daddy had an accident, she's also realized the thing can be dangerous; consequently whenever she gets any kind of cut or scratch and a random stranger makes the mistake of asking her how she got it, she will bravely tell them she did it with a chainsaw.

Despite this statement we have not yet been visited by child welfare officers.

At any rate our pint sized farmer is coming along fine. While playing in the sandbox at her preschool the other day, she announced to the boys bunched along the sides that she was digging a trench.

"A trench??" the boys asked, increduously. They'd never dug anything but holes. "What's a trench?"

"A trench," Sydney explained, "Can be a big hole or a small hole. I'm digging a big hole."

I think the boys have some catching up to do, if they want to dig trenches with Sydney.

Manners

A few days ago I asked Sydney if I could have a piece of her cookie. She must have been in a good mood, since she answered, "Yes, you may sure can!" And she even broke off a sizable piece and gave it to me.

I fully realize that she picks up these phrases and mannerisms from the people around her (mostly me and my husband), but they are both amazingly endearing and hilariously funny coming out of the mouth of a not-quite three-year-old. And you never know when you might encounter them. Yesterday evening at dinner, my husband offered Sydney a cucumber slice, to which she waved her hand at him and said, "No, thank you for the offer, though."

A little while later, he offered her a bite of fish, to which she replied:

"BLECCCHHH!!!"

So at least we know she's still not-quite three and not some old soul stuck in a child's body.

A Day in the Life of a Sydney

Things are going well, and Sydney is cheerful, rambunctious and mischievous. Suddenly she removes both her socks and her sweater and throw them away, declaring that she is hot and doesn't want to wear them.

It is about 5 degrees Farenheit outside, and while warmer inside, it is definitely not tank top weather, which aside from her jeans is now all that she has on.

"Syd," I say, in my calmest, most reasonable voice, "You have to wear your sweater."

"I don't want to wear my sweater!" she says, still happily bouncing around.

"Yes, I know, but it's cold out, so you have to."

"Noooooo!" she says, and we're clearly going downhill from here.

"Syd-"

"I'm going to hide!" she says, and darts into the kitchen.

I try the Ultimatum as I follow her into the kitchen with the discarded sweater in my hand. "I'm going to count to three, and when I get to three, I'm going to put it on for you!" Counting is bad enough, but the threat of someone doing something Sydney knows how to do herself is to be avoided at all costs. I'm sure I have her now. But she's not moving, so I start my count.

"One...."

"NO! Don't count!!" she says, and gets up, always a good sign. I come closer and she comes closer, we've almost gotten Project Sweater under control.

"Two..." I say, and she darts past me, runs back the way she came, goes into the bathroom and closes the door.

My husband, who has been trying to cook dinner, now enters the fray.

"Sydney, you have to do what Mommy says."

"I don't want to!" comes the muffled, determined voice, and she leans against the bathroom door to make sure I don't come in.

"Fine," he says. "Stay in the bathroom then."

Well, that works, because she comes out, but still won't stand still long enough to wear the sweater. Now both parents are engaged, and we surround her from both sides. Desperate, cornered, she does the only honorable thing. She grabs the sweater from my hands, rushes to the gate which blocks the dining room, and throws it over the gate into the darkness beyond. Then she glares at us, defiant, and collapses into a protest heap on the floor. "I...don't..want..to...wear! the! Sweat! er!!"

Fortunately, she still only weighs about 25 pounds, so its still relatively easy to pick her up at this point, carry her upstairs, and deposit her into her room to think it over. She cries and cries and then finally falls silent.

"Mommy?" she says, in her calmest, most reasonable voice. "I'm ready to wear my sweater now." I go into the room, we put on the sweater, and we hug to make up.

Later, she protests that she already blew her nose and doesn't need to do it again, and makes her point clear by hiding the tissue under the dog's bed. We let it run. What's a little snot in the scheme of things?

Gondolas in Space

It was New Year's Eve, and we'd seen a circus, a taiko performance, some fireworks and a bunch of Loony Tunes cartoons, all part of First Night in Burlington, VT. Sydney had been going strong all day but there we were, napless, trying to eat dinner in a small Korean restaurant. One of the cartoons had made a big impression on her.

"I want to go in a rocket ship with Mommy and Bugs Bunny!" she said, restlessly toying with a dumpling.

"Okay!" I said, glad to have some kind of distraction that did not involve throwing food. "First, we need a countdown!" And I counted down from 10 to 1. Sydney was obviously anticipating the next maneuver, so with great gusto I lifted her out of her chair and made rocket noises at the same time.

Instead of giggling happily, she burst into hysterical tears.

"NO!" she cried between hiccups, "I wanted to go in a real one!" And she collapsed onto my shoulder with great, shuddering sobs.

Which is just as well, since I was suddenly overcome with hysterical laughter, even over my horror at unintentionally bursting her bubble.

Welcome to reality, kid.

Gently as I could, I explained that we couldn't go in a real one, at least not right now, and that she perhaps might like to practice first? Maybe go to astronaut school? Maybe someday when she was older and had gone to astronaut school, she could go in a real one. A few moments later she collapsed into a puddle on my lap and fell deeply asleep. So started Sydney's 2010.

We have these heartbreaking moments of disappointment more frequently now, as Sydney realizes more and more that the whole world is not actually revolving around her, that things can't always happen right now, that even fun things come to an end. We try to tread the fine line of not giving her false hope and also not breaking her spirit, and sometime we succeed, and sometimes we don't. It depends on the day, or maybe just the moment.

At any rate it's certainly not all bad. Today I came home to be greeted by an obviously excited child who couldn't wait to tell me about her day.

"We ate lunch in a gondola!!" she cried.

It's not a spaceship, but maybe it's just as good.

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.