Future Aspirations

So, The Littlest Critic and I are on our way to school, and she's watching a Backyardigans DVD in the backseat.

When we were home together all day, I used to let her watch cartoons in the morning when she first got up. It helped with her morning grumpiness to be allowed to slowly emerge into the land of the nice, and it gave me time to make her breakfast, tidy up the kitchen, and make our day's plans. She really didn't do well when she started school and her morning routine went from relaxed to frantic. I didn't do so well either and our first few weeks of getting ready for school in the morning were epic battles.

And I sympathize with this, I really do. When I was a kid, my mother would wake me in the morning for school, then come back to my room and find me sitting on the edge of the bed, one sock on and one sock in my hand as I stared blankly at the closet, still half asleep. I can't confirm this, but it wouldn't at all be surprising if a long, slender thread of drool dangled from my mouth. Getting up early in the morning for school is the worst.

Having learned my lesson from these early battles over such things as what to wear and brushing all the massive tangles out of her very fine hair, now I wake her with the portable DVD player blasting a favorite cartoon. Generally, I limit how much TV she can watch and try to insist on her playing with her toys or the two of us doing something fun together instead of vegging out. But this innovation has made our mornings run like clockwork. Two episodes of Clifford 's Puppy Days or one of The Backyardigans and I can dress her, brush her hair, get her to eat her breakfast and brush her teeth with minimal fuss. And it puts her in a better mood in the mornings which makes the transition to school that much easier.

And on some days, if the cartoons run long or if she's still a bit sleepy and surly, we pack of the DVD player and take it in the car with us. Today, she was watching "The Race to the Tower of Power." It's an episode of her new love, The Backyardigans, and in this episode two of the characters are super-villains and two are superheroes. The villains want to get to the aforementioned Tower so they can steal the Key to the World and , in classic bad guy fashion, rule the world. The superheroes want to stop them, naturally.

As we are driving along, I mention to TLC that A.J. one of her friends from pre-school also likes superheroes, especially Spiderman. She looked at me from the backseat and squinched her face up.

"You know," she told me, "I'm going to be a superhero when I grow up."
"You are?" I replied. It wasn't really a question; she's told me this on a number of occasions. Actually, I was just feeding her a straight line, which is a big part of my parenting style.
"Uh huh. I'm gonna be... UNDERCAT!!!"

Plain text doesn't quite do justification to how loudly and enthusiastically she delivered her superhero nomme de guerre. It was kind of sing-songy as if you could hear "Da da da da da daaaah!" music playing in the background. As if she were about to deliver the knockout blow to her own particular brand of super-villains.

Undercat, if you can't quite figure it out, is the feline equivalent of Underdog. With a cape from an earlier Snow White costume, a cat mask and tail, at home The Littlest Critic transforms herself into Undercat, writer of wrongs, fighter of toys, and purrer of purrs. At one point it was even going to be her Halloween costume (until she discovered a pink old-fashioned soda fountain waitress costume that The Wife bought for her because TLC described it as having "more function").

So for a current count, TLC plans on being a superhero, a secret agent, and an animal doctor when she grows up. The last one, I'm sure, is merely her disguise and alter-ego, mild mannered veterinarian at a zoo by day. She's even explained to me that some of her friends at school have told her that you can't actually be a superhero, but then she informed me quite certainly that "they don't know." I'm glad she's holding on to her dreams like that.

You go, Undercat, you go!




Image stolen from www.tubcat.com