good morning, my ass

or, the case of the grumpy daddy.

this morning:

"okay, let's pick out some clothes."

bottom drawer is opened, every single shirt is considered before settling on a pink long sleeve number with stars or fireworks or something.

"now let's get bottoms on you." a five year old finger points at the closet. "yes, all the bottoms are in there." a grunt. "go pick something."

"i need you to come with me."

"you need me to move three feet over into the closet?" nods. a sigh. "okay, but let's pick something good." we move. she sits on my lap. she looks up, scans skirts, reaches, snags one, pulls on it until the hanger lets it go. "do you want to wear leggings with that?"

"nooooooo! i hate leggings."

"you do? why do you hate leggings?"

"noooooooo! i don't want to wear them!"

"fine. you don't have to wear them, but why do you hate them? they're just like stretchy pants."

"noooooooo!!! i don't want to wear them."

"i understand that. you don't have to wear leggings, but it's kind of cold out, so maybe we should pick some pants." skirt is waved around like a flag.

"i don't want to wear pants."

"fine, but you need something on your legs for cold."

"i want to wear tights."

We scoot out of the closet and from her drawer i pull out ever single pair of tights and hose and explain why it doesn't match even remotely or wiggle my finger through holes in the tights.

"see? you don't have any tights or hose you can wear. are you sure you don't just want some leggings?"

"I hate leggings! they hurt me."

"fine. but you're going to be cold, but that's all right. you probably won't go out to play at school anyway. they'll keep you inside."

"pants."

"what?"

"i want to wear pants."

"okay, let's pick some pants."

skirt is retrieved from floor, put back on hanger. pants drawer is opened. tan capris with pink belt proffered.

"nooooooooo!" oh the horror.

"how about these?" pink plaid pants. "no, they don't really match."

"i don't wanna wear them!"

"well, relax, you're not going to."

"you have all these leggings. why did we even buy them?"

"Nooooooooooo! I don't want to wear leggings."

"and. you. are. not. going. to. wear. them. what about these jeans?"

"no."

"this pair?"

a nod of the head. success. i pull off her jammie bottoms and pull on her jeans.

"it's hurting me. it's too tight. they hurt my bottom. why did you do that?! why did you put these pants on me!?" she pulls jeans off and throws them on the floor.

"okay, let's pick another pair."

"noooo. i want that pair."

"okay."

"will you help me put them on?"

"yes." i pull them up her leg again.

"noooooo!!! they're too tight."

"here, let me loosen them." inside strap is unbuttoned on one side, the elastic is withdrawn back into the pants and a looser button position is picked on strap. I reach to the other side to loosen that side. my hand is pushed away.

"that's loose enough."

"Okay."

"i said that's loose enough!"

"and i said, okay."

pants are buttoned and zipped.

"now let's get some socks on you." sock drawer opened.

"I want pink."

sock drawer is surveyed, no pink socks in evidence. a purplish pink pair that i know are too small is offered. a shake of the head. i pull out the only pink-pink pair in evidence, a pair of strawberry shortcake ankle socks.

"yes, yes, yes."

i put them on her feet.

"my socks huuuuurrrrt." socks are removed and then socks are put back on with lots of bagginess and room. "they hurrrrrrt."

"can we try a different pair of socks?"

"nooooo!" she throws head back and lies on floor sobbing. "i waaaaannnttt theeese socks." patiently, socks are removed a second time and put on again. "theeeyyyy hurrrrrrt." again, socks are removed, replaced on. "how's that?" sniffles. nods.

"all right. let's go downstairs."

"i want pablo." her blue stuffed penguin is retrieved from the bed.

"let's get moving, come on, downstairs."

we go downstairs. i put one shoe on her.

"it huuuurrrrttts." i take it off, adjust the sock, try to get the shoe on again. she jerks it off her foot, tries to adjust her sock. i try to get the shoe on again, but the back of it folds over as i try to get her foot into it without moving her sock a fraction of an inch. "you're doing it wrong!" she declares, throws back her head and howls out a sob. "yooooouuuuuu'rrrre dooooooiiiinnnggg it wrong!" i try again, get it right. move on the other shoe. after six similar attempts, it is sufficiently done.

after a bit of asking, asking again, asking a third time, after i run back upstairs for the right kind of toothpaste, she starts to brush her teeth. when she's done, she comes to me and shows me how they shine, then asks,

"can i have a popsicle for breakfast?"

"that's not really a good breakfast, honey."

"but i want one. mommy lets me have one." mommy did indeed let her have a popsicle for breakfast earlier in the week. why? the mind boggles. supercomputers that can calculate the trillionth position of pi in fifteen seconds are hard at work formulating an answer, but as of yet, no answers can be found.

"well, it's not really a good breakfast even if it is juice and milk." (mommy's words from earlier: "they are low in sugar" float through my brain. wouldn't it just be easier to give in than to fight?)

"but i want one."

i shake pink frosted mini-wheats into a ziploc. "this is your breakfast."

"not a lot, daddy, not a lot. just a little. i'll eat those and then i'll eat a popsicle."

"fine. eat all of these and then you can have a popsicle. i have to finish getting read, so you go sit at the table and eat these."

she takes bag from me. she walks into dining room. i leave kitchen by other doorway and go to bathroom to brush teeth.

when i come out, she's sitting on the living room floor, holding her cat, sparrow.

"are you done eating already?" i ask, then i see the bag of cereal on the floor, unopened. "honey, you have to eat your wheat or you're not going to get a popsicle."

"but she wanted me to pet her. she looked at me."

"that's fine, but you have to eat your wheat." she opens the bag with one hand tightly clenching the cat, the ziploc waving in the cats face. "not here. i don't want pink wheat crumbs on the floor. that's why i said eat at the table." crunching commences with wheat falling on cat, kid, and new rug. "not here," i repeat. "come on, we have to go. i don't think you're going to get a popsicle."

she throws herself on the floor, begins sobbing at top of lungs. "i waaaaannnnnnttt a popsicle. mooooooommmmmy lets me have one."

"but you're not eating your breakfast."

"i aaaaaammmmm," she sobs through mouthful of pink mashed strings of spun wheat.

i walk to kitchen. "let's go. come on."

she comes in, snot running down nose, eyes streaming tears. "poooopppppppsicle."

"honey, you haven't eaten your breakfast. i said eat your breakfast and you can have one."

she tries to climb on stool to open freezer. i remove her from stool, her legs flailing and kicking in every direction. i set her down, she flops on floor.

"that's it. let's go." i open freezer, grab popsicle, shove it into my pocket. then i unlock back door and step out on to deck. she follows me, then runs into yard, still clutching her pablo penguin and her bag of pink miniwheats. "come on, get in the car. we have to go."

"poooooooooooooooppppsicle! pooooooooooopppppsicle!"

i get in the car. i shut door. i honk horn. i roll down window to hear: "pooooooppppsicle!!!"

"i'm leaving without you!" i shout out my window and start the car. through the garage window i can see her in the backyard near her playground. i back out slowly. the car is totally out of the garage. she comes around the corner of the garage and watches from a distance as the garage door goes down. tears are running down her face. "let's go. get in the car," i say through my open window. she just stares at me. i back down the driveway almost to the street. she comes to the driveway's center and stares at me, sobbing. i stop the car, get out, go pick her up and put her in the car, strapping her into her carseat.

"poooooooooopsicle."

"that's it! i'm sick of these stupid freaking popsicles! i am sick and tired of all this morning drama! cut it out! it isn't funny! it isn't cute! it's obnoxious. you're being an obnoxious brat right this very second. i've got your damn popsicle in my pocket and right now i feel like throwing it out the freaking window! just eat your stupid pink wheat but you are never ever ever going to have a popsicle for breakfast again as long as you live with us. never. never ever. you grow up and move out, live by yourself, you can have all the freaking popsicles you want! you can eat dirt and meat and bugs for all i care. now eat you freaking pink wheat so you can have this stupid freaking popsicle. seriously."

oddly enough, she stops crying just like that. it all dries up. not in some "i'm so scared i'll stifle my emotions," way but in a "well, good to see you have some human feelings about the situation, daddy" way. she eats all the pink wheat as we drive to school, then she waves the empty ziploc bag in the air. "i'mmmm finished." it's there, a real taunting tone to her voice.

feeling defeated, i hand back her popsicle.

"better eat this fast. what you haven't finished by the time we get to school you don't get to eat."
she gobbles it up, then hands me the sticky stick and wrapper. i put them between the two front seats.

the moment she's finished, though:

"my socks are wet!" tears in a storm. her shoe is pulled off, her sock too. "why did you let this happen!? my soooooooooocckkkkksssss are wet! it's uncomfortable!"

"i didn't do it. you wandered off into the wet grass. what am i supposed to about that?"

"mmmmmyyyyyyyy sooooooocccckkkkkkssssss aaaaaaaaarrrrrreeee weeeeeeetttt!!!!"

"ENOUGH! BE QUIET! KNOCK IT OFF. YOU'RE DRIVING ME CRAZY!"

silence from the backseat save for sniffles.

in the school parking lot, i take her sock and rub it between my palms briskly, rub it inside and out against the car seat trying to dry it as much as possible. when i put it on this time, there's no complaining about it being wet or it hurting. she sobs and sobs, "i just want to go home, let's go home, i just want to go home, let's go home."

we get out of the car. i carry her into the building as she clutches me tightly, wrapping her whole body around me, crying into my neck. we detour into the library, nice and dark and quiet. i set her down on a chair, use her pablo to wipe away her tears.

"okay, okay, settle down, that's right. deep breaths. settle down. you have to settle down if you want to go into your classroom and play." classes don't start for about an hour, so she has a good chunk of morning playtime. "you have to settle down if you want to go and play, okay." she nods. i wipe away all her tears. "are you ready?" she nods.

we leave the library. "it's a race," i say and start hustling toward the door of her classroom, "it's a race and i'm gonna win!"

she runs after me, gets ahead of me, makes it to the door first.

we enter the classroom, say good morning to the teacher, put away her penguin. hang up her jacket. she hugs me very very tightly. i kiss her cheeks and hug her back.

"go have fun, sweetie. i love you so much. sorry i was so grumpy this morning." she starts to tear up again. "look, there's your friends! hurry up, they're getting away."

she runs off.

i drive twenty minutes to the train station, wait on the platform another ten minutes, ride into the city for thirty minutes, get all the way to work before i realize i have a globbed popsicle stick stuck to my butt.

Storytelling, or Who's Telling this Tale?

For the last month or so, The Littlest Critic has been enthralled by the stories I've been telling at bath time.

Over the months shortly after the birth of our daughter, The Wife and I were gifted three purple hippos with yellow inner tubes for the bath. With temperature sensitive letters spelling out "HOT" on their bottoms, these toys informed new parents, idiots that we are, when we ran too hot a bath for our newborns.

The stories featuring these hippos are alternately about three hippo sisters, Cloris, Delores, and Doris or three hippo brothers Boris, Morris, and Norris. The sisters had real, classically constructed stories with an introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution. The brothers stories were just madcap nonsense about getting cookies off high shelves or playing catch.

In the beginning, there were only the three sisters and their friend, The Green Bear, a bath toy we found last summer trapped in the filter of the public pool that we could not (COULD NOT) leave behind. Other bath toys, such as the Jewel Duck, the Corn Duck, or The Boy and The Girl, could join in the adventures, but it was pretty much a hippo and bear only show.

After a while, I got a little case of writer's block (although what we'd call it in this instance, I don't know) and I began toying with the notion of using classical sources from antiquity when I was trapped. At first, it was hard digging through source material to find the right Greek myths that I could pilfer (like Shakespeare, he said, preeningly), then I stumbled upon the Thousand and One Nights scenario.

This has worked like gangbusters. The three hippo sisters don't want to go to bed. Their daddy, The Green Bear, makes them go through all the required cleaning rituals, then tucks them into bed. The wily sisters, wanting to stay awake, offer to tell their father stories. He, being a bear who enjoys a tale more than most, always acquiesces and lets the three sisters tell one story each.

The first sister usually tells a Three Hippo Brothers story that is some kind of nonsense (though I've lately slipped in some small math problems for the hippos to solve in order to get the cookies or the candy they want). The second sister tells a classic tale. (The night I told a variation on Pygmalion where a lonely hippo makes a statue of a duck to be a friend, a statue that comes to life, the story proved such a hit that I was required to tell it three times in various ways.) The third sister usually tells a very repetitive story about a bee that visits a playground and everything he flies over and around. This last story typically puts The Green Bear Daddy to sleep and the Three Hippo Sisters celebrate their victory by staying up and playing all night.

Ahem. That, my friends, has been the routine for a while now.

Until. Until TLC decided she wanted to take over the storytelling duties. Stepping back from this, having had time to mull it over, I am usually quite pleased that she's shown such an interest in being a storyteller like me.

But, but, but, at the time she does it, I'm really and actually pretty frustrated. Hey! I think, I'm the one telling the story here. I've actually taken time out to make a good parallel, hippo-centric version of the Judgment of Paris. This is real work that I'm putting into these bath time adventures. Now she's going to sidetrack the whole business for her nonsense?

I always let her tell her stories though. They're usually pretty funny. High on nonsense, goofy as all get out, they're like some dadaist prank of a children's book or a trip through the mind of a five year old Dali (incidentally, the last time we visited the Cleveland Museum of Art, this was TLC's favorite picture; while it's not particularly amusing, she thought it a stitch).

All of this, mind you, is just one big preface so I can present to you, unedited, as transcribed by me seconds after its completion, one of the bath time stories, as told by The Littlest Critic. Enjoy.

They all played in the park and they played ping poe pong pango peego. And they hit the baseball right into their mouths, and it was ice cream. It was an ice cream baseball.

And they hit it with a bat! Another one! Another one! Another one! Another ice cream baseball.

And it landed right in the mouth of a lion! And the people saw the teeter totter would be a good way to shoot him up to the sky. And the lion ROARED and he jumped.

The End.

Sophocles better watch out. There's some pretty stiff competition on the way. Oh yeah.

Five Years Old

Today, at 3am, roughly the time The Wife was up going to the bathroom, while I snored blissfully unawares, we passed the five year threshold.

Five years since The Littlest Critic came out into the world, her two dark-haired parents astonished to see this tiny little girl with a funky red Afro being carried over to the warming station. It had been a long, induced labor, despite the fact that we had taken eleven of our twelve weeks of Bradley Birthing Classes, preparing us for the wonders of natural childbirth.

She was complicated from the get-go and in five years that hasn't changed a bit. If there is an easy way of doing something or a fantastically complicated way, rest assured that fantastically complicated will win the day.

* * * * *

The Wife stayed home and nursed through the summer following her birth, then when school started again, I snagged a part-time second shift job to stay at home with her during the day. The Wife hooked herself up to the breastpump and left us with bottles. TLC cared not at all for the fancy, ergonomically designed, top-of-the-line bottle nipples. We tried every kind, but only the cheapest, greasiest Wal-Mart brand of latex nipple would do.

And, boy, could she chug. Better correct that trait now, I often thought. That's never going to be a good plan come high school.

* * * * *

Like many people claim that you forget the pain of birth, I have long since forgotten the pain of changing diapers. It's nothing that a visit to my sister and my nieces won't bring back in all its odorous, Technicolor glory. One late summer day, when TLC was about two, as we passed an RTA bus stop near the playground, she looked up at me and remarked, "That's for changing diapers." I looked from the bus stop to her face, then dimly recalled that almost one full year ago, one late summer day, I had stopped and changed her diaper in that very same place.

TLC may not have the greatest memory for why she's not allowed to jump up and down on the back of the couch or why she can't have another cookie today or what I said about trying to run in the parking lot or how to treat her cat, Sparrow, nicely. But every so often she reaches way down and pulls out something strange like this.

* * * * *

Those first four years when we spent every day together, playing, eating, sleeping in, watching cartoons on PBS, going for wagon and bike rides, visiting the library, potty training, learning numbers and letters and words for every single thing under the sun – those first four years are a golden age that will probably never be equaled in my life.

In those four years, TLC introduced me to her imaginary friends, Annasasso, Intenna, and Benniest; she made up stories about Stripes Can Be, Spots Can Do, and the Pineapple Mouse; she named all her stuffed animals with bizarre names like Hayso, Pop Pop Doc Doc, and Ackly Dackliest (who had his/her/? own theme song that went "Ackly Dackly doodlest/TOOOOO MEEEEE/Bum Bum"); and we invented a rather self-explanatory game called Tickle Tack which is played to this day.

In those four years, I almost entirely gave up writing fiction and spent the bulk of my creative time inhabiting a strange fictional world occupied by talking poodles, grumbly dogs, and an imaginary friend who only could be spoken to on the phone. Now that TLC is in pre-school, I don't live there any more. I only visit.

* * * * *

We are vegetarians, TLC and I. Her mother is about 90% vegetarian, though she slips where chicken is concerned and can be induced to take small nibbles of well-prepared steak. People sometimes presume to ask me if TLC made the choice herself to be a vegetarian, as though I were depriving her of some necessity of life. As though parents didn't make hundreds of choices for their children without their children's consent: you will be raised Catholic, you will not hit other people, you will take piano lessons or play soccer, you will wear pants when you go outside, you will stop picking your nose and eating it, you will take baths and brush your teeth, you will go to sleep now.

Yet, for some reason, the follow up question as to whether or not TLC "chose" vegetarianism is frequent, stupidly so.

For the record, TLC thinks the idea of eating poor little animals, who are her dear friends, each and every one of them, is horrible. I've not indoctrinated this idea in her or tried to scare her with PETA videos of slaughterhouse conditions. I've simply said, "Some people eat cows. Do you want to eat cows?" And she looks at me with an almost horrified expression or she'll stick out her tongue and say, "Yuck."

* * * * *

For TLC's first birthday, our scuffed, nasty looking hardwood floors were freshly covered with brand new beige carpet. Everyone marveled at what a difference a little carpet made. All her toddler buddies toddled about, falling over on to their bottoms, on to their hands and feet, on to their heads, and no one cried. Miraculously, no one got frosting on the new carpet either, not even her older cousin R., a rambunctious boy who ran around clonking all the adults on the head with a balloon that bore a striking resemblance to an enormous red phallus.

Just in time for tonight's dinner (the party will be held later, off-site), our carpet has been pulled up and our scuffed, nasty looking hardwood floors are freshly sanded, stained, and refinished. Many of the downstairs rooms have been freshly painted with lighter, brighter colors.

TLC has already given herself an enormous goose-egg bump on her noggin while executing various spins and pirouettes. Plus ça change, plus ça change is probably more accurate here. As it always is.

* * * * *

In the last five years, I have learned more about people (myself included) that I have learned in the previous thirty. In the last five years, I have found a love that outdoes all typical human passions. I love you, Littlest Critic, you little darling, you little smart ass.

Surrogate

When The Littlest Critic was a baby, then a toddler, The Wife and I talked of A Sibling. She wanted a second baby. I had made it clear that one child was all I was prepared for. Any one of a number of reasons can be given for my refusal: my own wishes to be an only child when I was young (sorry, sisters o' mine), the environmental impact more Americans make, the issue of how to afford more children in this ever-increasingly expensive world, the timeframe when I'd finally be able to go back to working a meaningful, day-shift job, and, lastly, to be perfectly frank, I hadn't wanted to have any children in the first place.

Now, I completely admit, I had been wrong about that. TLC has enriched my life in so many ways that I can't even comprehend anymore who I was before her. She herself is, in her own rights, well worth the price of everything. I love her dearly and wouldn't trade her for the wide world.

For a while, The Wife, too, went back and forth on the new baby idea. Sometimes she was gung-ho for it, to the point of having shouting fights with me to advocate the idea. Other days, she was glad TLC was an only child since the tyke didn't have to share us. Coming from multiple sibling families, the both of us, we understood the dynamics of having to fight for your share of attention, your fair shake, your turn to be, if not the favorite, at least the favored.

Eventually, I pretty much ran the clock out on this line of argument. The Wife's family tree is overrun with twins and once you reach a certain age, the chances of producing twins goes way, way up. The Wife is – ahem – in the range of that line in the sand, and it's been made quite clear from my end that I would consider twins a catastrophe of epic proportions.

Even TLC has waffled on the idea of A Sibling. "Just you and me and mama," she used to say, realizing that a new baby would want to play with her toys, would get all the attention, would cut in on her being the center of the world. A Sibling, moreover, would signify a move by TLC out of our bed and into her own.

(Yes, we are co-sleepers; yes, she is almost five; no, I don't care what you or anyone else thinks about this.)

From time to time, TLC would suddenly announce, "I want a baby sister." It was pretty much always a sister, never a brother. Then she'd go right back to not wanting a baby sister. "Just you and me and mama." We'd visit her cousins, at least one of my sisters being fecund enough to have a new baby arriving often enough to let TLC get a quick new-baby-smell fix. The Wife, too, would hold one of these nieces, the tiny, weightlessness in her arms, and she'd look at me with doe eyes and wistfully puckered lips.

No dice. "You know," I'd artfully mention later in the car, "that weight does get harder to drop off as you get older."

(Yes, I am a jerk; yes, I do know it; no, I don't care what you think about this 'cause I'm a jerk. Q.E.D.)

Eventually, TLC started Pre-K and I snagged a good job in the advertising field. Having such a good job, such an impressive sounding job ("What do I do? Well, I'm a copywriter for an advertising firm.") acted as its own baby repellent, as the notion that I'd have to give up this good job to take another cruddy night job in order to stay home with the new baby was too much even for The Wife to ask of me. You see, I'd spent the last four years in a job that The Wife described after visiting my office as "soul deadening." When she said that, she'd sometimes look at me with a mix of pity and admiration, as if I'd come damaged out of a great war.

For the last few months or so, the idea of A Sibling hasn't really come up much, but when it has, TLC has been consistently in favor of the idea. Last night, the newest cousin, my nephew by my youngest sister was at the house and TLC began talking up a "baby brother." The Wife assured me that this was not, in fact, the first time a brother had been part of her plan.

The Wife went further to explain TLC's thinking on this matter. It went like this:

Daddy and Mommy will get not married anymore and Daddy will get a new wife. Then he and the new mommy will have a baby brother for me, then Daddy and my baby brother will move back here and live with us and marry Mommy again.

What impressive kid logic! TLC's hooking me up with some brand new luvin, plus, somehow she's become convinced that the actual roadblock to A Sibling isn't me, but her mother. I know she's been Daddy's Girl lately, but seriously, she's too good to me by far.

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

Saying Goodbye

The morning school drop-off is a torment for me. Every day for the last four years, we saw Mommy out the door to work, then me and The Littlest Critic went off to play. We colored, we wrestled, we played "tickle-tack," (a game involving one of us tackling the other, then, obviously, tickling), we were dogs, we did horseyback rides, we went to the zoo, we went to the kid's museum, we went to the "picture museum."

And so, every day was fun fun fun.

Now that TLC goes to school in the morning, since I have the later start time, I get to do the drop off. Some mornings it all goes off without a hitch, some mornings there are hiccups, and some mornings there are copious tears. On some of the bad mornings, TLC just doesn't want to be at school, and I try to make a joke out of it and tell her that I'll stay at school and she can go to work. Then I give her directions to the train station.

That kind of routine works. Sometimes.

On very bad days, what TLC usually wants is for me to stay with her. Often she says she has no friends at school (which is untrue, but sad and it makes me wonder why she says that) and that she wants me to stay to play with her.

And on good days, TLC skips away from me and runs off to play with these non-existent friends of hers.

Which brings me to my dilemma. I've noticed a correlation. On days where I kneel down and give her a hug and a kiss, TLC is more likely to have a sad day and try to convince me to stay. On one such day, I had to hold her for about fifteen minutes while she cried into my shoulder, and finally the teacher had to come and take her from me. I can usually count on the teacher for the assist on the bad days.

On days where I don't give her a kiss and tell her how much I love her, TLC usually makes a dash to play without even a backward glance. We won't make eye contact again until I get home from work, hours later. The first couple times she ran off to play without a goodbye kiss, I've gone over and given her a hug and a kiss, prompting tears and her pleas for me to stay.

And so. And so, I don't know what to do. I want her to have a good day at school and I want her to be happy there, so the fewer tears the better. But it kills me inside to leave without a kiss and without telling her how much I love her. I've tried kissing and hugging her before we even get in the car, but it's not the same. If I do it at the moment I leave, though, trouble.

I know she's not being scarred for life by my not hugging and kissing her goodbye, but it won't be too long before she'll be too cool for that kind of thing, and a kiss from dad in public will be like getting a kiss from a leper.

What to do? What to do? A dad needs his kisses, you know.

Avoiding The Talk

(The following story is about a year and a half old, but I’ve long since thought of putting it up online. Consider it some light holiday reading.)

It was only a matter of time.

I was in the basement doing laundry when from upstairs came a sudden scream and wailing. I ran upstairs and The Littlest Critic stood in front of the CD cabinet.

“Wheeeeerrreeee’s Sneeeeaaaat?” she howled, pointing at nothing.

At long last, she had noticed the missing fish bowl. A few weeks earlier, her goldfish, Sneat (“What’s your fish’s name, honey?” “It’s neat.” “Neat?” “No, Sneat.”) had gone belly up. We debated what to do, the wife and I. Her suggestion, just put the bowl away downstairs and flush the fish, seemed a dicey proposition, but my idea of simply buying a look-alike replacement was tabled. “She’ll never notice,” my wife assured me.

Well, she had.

TLC looked up at me with wide, tear-filled eyes and a red tear-streaked face. She could have refilled the fishbowl with enough tears to happily support a tropical fish. I floundered.

“She’s, uh, she’s on a fish-cation,” I tried, “like the vacation you’re going on later. She went on a fish vacation.”

“NOOOOOoooooo, I want her, I want her,” TLC cried.

“Well, she’ll be back soon,” I tried. “She went to see her mommy and her daddy on her fish-cation.”

“Noooooo, she’s my friend and I want her to come home,” TLC wailed.

“She’ll be home soon, she’ll be home soon, she will, she will,” I babbled, thinking fast.

By this time TLC’s whole face was bright red from howling, her nose a complete bubble of snot and tears and more snot. Thinking desperately, I said, “Would you like to talk to Sneat on the phone?”

The crying subsided a little, “Uh-uh-uh-uh, huh” TLC tearfully stammered.

“Okay, wait here and I’ll get her on the phone.” I walked into the den and quickly phoned my mother, who was in her car. “Listen,” I whispered fiercely, “I need a bizarre favor. TLC’s fish died. I told her the fish was on vacation. I need you to pretend to be a fish. Just say ‘bloop bloop bloop’ in a high-pitched voice when I put TLC on the phone, okay?”

“What?” my mom said. I repeated my request. “Ooookaaaay,” she answered, sounding puzzled.

“Let me hear you. Do a bloop.” I commanded. If she mucked this up, I was in deep trouble. It would have to be The Talk. I dreaded The Talk. Yes, children are more resilient than we adults give them credit for, and yes, they prefer the Truth to a parent’s lies, but this had caught me unprepared. Besides, TLC was only three. There’ll be time enough for the brutal facts of life when she’s five.

“Bloop,” she said.

“Good, good.” I went into the kitchen where TLC sat on the floor, wiping her nose and face on her arm. “I have Sneat on the phone. Would you like to talk to her?”

TLC looked up at me and smiled through her tears. “Yes!” she squealed. I held the phone out to her and she said, “Sneat, Sneat, come home, I have a treat for you.”

“Bloop bloop bloop bloop,” I heard my mother bleating. “Bloop bloop bloop.”

“Come home, friend,” she told my mother, the fish.

“Okay,” I said, holding out my hand and taking back the phone. “Thank you, Sneat,” I said to my mom’s blooping. “Talk to you later. We’ll see you when you get home.”

As TLC got dressed, she told me she loved Sneat, she missed her, she had a treat for her for when she got home that the two of them would share, that Sneat would be home tonight.

While I got myself dressed and ready to go, TLC drew several pictures of Sneat, writing Sneat’s name in her three-year old’s sprawling scribbles, and showing me, and writing letters that (I’m told) went like this, “Dear Sneat, come home, I love her, she’s my friend, come home. We’ll share treats.”

Dressed, we were off to pick up Sneat at the pet store where I told TLC Sneat was waiting for us. She had gone on fish-cation, and just like at an airport, someone had to show up to pick her up. She had been all over the ocean and now she was coming home, but someone had to pick her up.

We went first to Petsmart, where we’d bought the original Sneat and we scoured the tanks looking for a suitable look-alike, but all the fish were too chunky or too small or had spots in the wrong places or had eyes that were way too bulgy or were one thing or another. Not one of them looked even remotely like Sneat. I tried gamely, “Is that her? Is that her?” and every time TLC said, “No.”

“Is that her?”

“No, that’s her friend. That’s her other friend too. Where is she? I miss her.”

We moved from tank to tank then went back and did the whole round again, but it was no go. Nothing that could even remotely be passed off as Sneat. White goldfish with orange spots, orange goldfish with white spots, orange goldfish with black spots, white goldfish with black spots, but no fish with all three colors in the right proportions save for some seriously bulgy eyed fish that TLC just crinkled her nose up at when I said, Is that her?”

“Nooooo,” she said laughing, “that’s her FRIEND.” Soon, though, TLC started to look worried. “Where is she? Where is she?” The tremor in her voice promised that tears would be falling soon if we didn’t find the right fish.

“Well, maybe she’s at the other pet store, the one with the puppies and cats,” I said, hoping hoping hoping that there’d be a fish that looked enough like Sneat so that I wouldn’t have to leave with a bigger distraction, like a cat.

“Let’s go look,” TLC said.

In the parking lot, TLC said, “I think Sneat has tears in her eyes. She misses me. I miss her. I miss Sneat.”

“Do you have tears in your eyes”? I asked.

“Not right now,” she said and put her face tightly against my shoulder.

We got into the car and drove over to the other store. “Here they come!” TLC yelled from the back seat. “That’s what Sneat is saying, ‘Here they come!’”

Please let there be a fish that looks like Sneat, I thought. Please please please. An idea hit me — brilliant! “You know,” I said as we drove, “Sneat was on vacation and sometimes when you go on vacation you get a little bigger or a little smaller. Sometimes you get suntans. When I get suntans, I turn brown. You turn pink. Does Sneat get a suntan?”

“Yes,” she said, “she turns yellow.”

Great, I thought. I’d bought a little wiggle room.

We got to Petland. In the foyer, a small indoor pond bubbled in the corner. “Sneat’s friends,” TLC said pointing at the goldfish hovering just below the water’s surface. Inside the store, she saw the puppies, and we spent some time looking at them. “That’s Otis,” she said, pointing at a pug. “That’s Copper,” she said, tapping on the glass of a long-eared hound dog. “That’s Sadie,” she said about a black lab. “What’s that doggie’s name?” she asked, pointing to a mix.

“That’s a labradoodle,” I explained, “half poodle, half black lab.” We tried to think up a good name for it.

Then it was on to the mice, then finally to the back of the store, the fish.

Tank after tank after tank. No Sneat, no Sneat, that’s a Nemo, that’s a yellow fish, no Sneat, no Sneat.

“There she is!” I said, deciding to try and force the issue. I pointed at a tank that had a pretty close approximation.

“Where where?” TLC asked. I lifted her up to look into the tank.

“Right there,” I said, pointing to my candidate. “I think she got a little bigger on vacation. She grew, just like you always do.”

“She’ll get smaller when she gets home,” TLC assured me.

“Probably,” I said. “She probably just looks so big because she’s with a bunch of fish that are smaller than her. She’ll look the same when we get home, but I do think she grew just a little bit. Just a little.”

“Sneat! We found you!” TLC cheered. She ran over to the man who hoists out
the fish. “We found her! We found her!” He barely reacted.

“That one?” he asked me, tapping the glass. I nodded. Scoop, bag, tie, hand off.

At the checkout counter, TLC explained to the female cashier how Sneat had gone on a vacation to see her mother and her father, her mommy and her daddy, and how we had to pick her up and we need a bowl and some treats and how she missed her friend Sneat and she loves her and how we found her and we had to pick her up and she said goodbye to all her friends but she missed her and Sneat’s her friend and she loves her and we’re taking her home. The woman looked a little dazed at this torrent of words.

In the car, I pulled out the cellphone when TLC told me we need to get Sneat a bowl. “Hello? Bowl movers?” I faked into the phone. “Did you drop off Sneat’s bowl at our house yet? You did. Oh, okay. What? Oh really?” I scolded the plastic bag. “Sneat, you naughty little fish, you left your bowl dirty and now I have to clean it” Then back to my phone conversation, “Okay, thank you for dropping off the bowl. It’s in the basement? Great. I’ll clean it when I get home.”

TLC was happy to hear Sneat’s bowl was at our house. When we got home, I cleaned it all out. Sneat 2 sat in her bag, about to enter her new home. We were going to feed her because, as I’d been informed, she came home from her fish-cation hungry. As I scrubbed, TLC practiced saying, “Eat the fish food, Sneat. Don’t drink the dirty water. Eat the fish food.”

It's a Beautiful Day!

For the last two weeks, The Littlest Critic has been bereft of her stuffed giraffe, Dedan. A gift from Grandma, this toy accompanied the book Dedan Saves the Day. She took it to school to have at naptime and we put it neatly into her cubby.

Then someone stole it or did something else nefarious to it, and this little brute did it before naptime, so TLC was without Dedan for naptime. Needless to say, she did not nap. That night, she told me there was another little boy there who had a giraffe similar to Dedan and the last time she'd taken hers to school, he had thought hers was his. Not unlike the plot of the recent, excellent sequel Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity. (If you're unfamiliar with Mo Willems, stop being a chump and check him out!)

Try as I might, I couldn't get TLC to cough up a name of the little boy, then she later began denying the story and muddying the waters with conflicting accounts. This, this is why children are so rarely called to the witness stand.

We searched high and low, myself, The Wife, the teachers, the teachers' aides. Everyone. We looked in the stack of cots, we triple checked her cubby, we rooted through the tubs of blankets & pillows, we checked shelves. Everywhere.

Nada. Dead end. A notice was placed on the dry erase board: "Missing: One giraffe." And we waited. And waited.

Meanwhile, over the past two months, TLC has been trying desperately to learn how to snap her fingers. She's rubbed her finger on her thumb over and over. She's wept bitter tears at her failure. She's made me snap my fingers over and over to watch how it's done and we've done that until she's just been mad at me for being able to snap my fingers.

Yesterday, The Wife went to pick up TLC at school, and my daughter ran to her and said, "It's a beautiful day! I got Dedan back and look!" Whereupon she awesomely snapped her fingers again and again. "I can snap!"

And she snapped all day and she snapped all night. And when it was bedtime, she lay in bed, holding Dedan clutched under one arm, snapping her fingers in the dark.

It really was a beautiful day.