Little dude

Julia played her first video game last night: a silly bubble popper.

I’m saying that we’re teaching her how to move her thumbs independently.

Me

Mum

J-pop just drew a representative, recognizable drawing. And it was of us!

The whole family!

Have a look at our slideshow!

We just got back from vacation, and I’m utterly exhausted from all the fun. We went to Halifax and PEI, and we loved every minute of it.

Julia’sfavourite parts were seeing her grandparents, of course, and going to the beach. She loved ‘swimming’ (she can’t), and collecting shells. She was ‘afraid’ of the hermit crabs, which were just everywhere.

My favourite part was swimming (I can) with her on my back. The water was so shallow we could pull ourselves and swim along the shoreline chasing the hermit crabs she was so afraid of.

We’re on holiday this week (pictures to follow). In the meantime, a few notes.

Julia has been hooked on “ghost stories” for a while. I’m her favourite for telling them—there are no ghosts, though, and barely any story, so they’re incredibly tedious. Usually, I take the plot of a Dora episode and weave in a few of her friends and some recent events to lull her to sleep.

Yesterday Julia made all the work worth it. She rolled up a magazine and said “I spy… a wonderful daddy.”

I just about floated.

Jules asked today: “Daddy? Do you love me?”

“Yes, of course!”, I replied.

“Do you love Sam?”

“Of course!”

“Do you love Sofie?”

“Of course!”

“But you don’t love Mummy.”

“Of course I love Mummy! Why would you say that?”

“Then why don’t you let her in the garage?”

I didn’t have an answer to that, I’ll admit.

Ok. I lose. I’m the worst dad ever. But I’m trying to improve.

Julia has turned into a little sneak. First of all, she shoplifts. She doesn’t mean it, of course, but she just doesn’t get the whole money thing. She knows what it is, but not that there is a finite amount of it or that it can’t be summoned up. So the other day we went shopping, and she ate a strawberry at the market, shoveled jube-jubes into her mouth at the Bulk Barn, and palmed a baseball cap. Apparently it was a Calgary Stampeders cap. It had a horse on it.

Of course, we go apologize, and return things. Almost no staff gets it, though. They think she’s so cute. They don’t see the demon in her eyes. They laugh and say it’s OK. I want them to say, “Listen, bitch. Try that shit again, and I’ll have you thrown into juvie.” But they don’t.

Worse, she has justifications with impermeable logic. The first is the saying “You get what you get and you don’t get upset.” Of course, she got this at daycare, where its meaning is obvious: eat your lunch. To Julia it means, though: “I get what I get and my dad can’t get upset”–the unclear second-person pronoun being flexible, of course.

Her other favourite justification is “If you touch it, you have to eat it”. Obviously, this means “if you grab it, nobody can stop you from eating it.”

Just now, we went to the variety store across the street, and while I read the headlines, she grabbed a popsicle and hit me with both precocious barrels.

We’re sitting here watching the Canada-USA Olympic game, and I’m finally able to each my little girl everything I know about hockey. She asked,

“Daddy, how do they move?”

“Oh, darling, they’re on skates. See, the white stuff? It’s ice.”

My little girl now takes the lead and asks, “Oh! What are the lines for?”

Summoning my paternal authority: “They’re there for, uh, so that the players know where to line up.

I wonder if I can get a stepfather to help with this.

Today is a sad day. Julia cut the longest, loudest, stinkiest fart today, like a freight train.

She was embarrassed. I tried to cheer her up by smelling it, but she still thought she had done something wrong.

Julia is getting quite aware of wile and guile. She’s always liked hiding from mummy and Sofie (ie pulling the covers over our heads), but now she’s learned how to manipulate and bargain. She hasn’t quite got it–the idea of sacrificing something in exchange still eludes her–but she’s halfway there.

Last night at 3 in the morning, for instance, Julia started crying in her sleep. It has fallen to me, Dad, to comfort her, since Carrie is up all night with Sam. And, honestly, it’s not too much of a burden. Jpop loves to cuddle and snuggle and toot.

This time, Carrie went in. Julia snuggled right in until she realized it wasn’t me. Then she said, “I want my Daddy.”

“But Julia,” Carrie said, “I’m here. I love you.”

“I love you too, mummy. But I want daddy.”

“Julia, I’m here. Let’s cuddle!”

Realizing that she could wheedle, though, she said “No, mummy. I want daddy. But you can come back later, OK? But now you go get daddy.”