Seek And You Shall Find

My Christmas shopping so far consists of:

• A ridiculous splurge on so-cheap-it'd-be-a-crime-not-to-buy-them presents for Anna at Costco.

• Lots of internet shopping where I fill my cart up with an entire family full of presents and then fail to complete the purchase at the last possible second due to financial guilt.

• An insane rush around World Market with a $10 off any purchase of $30 coupon (I spent $87 dollars, which wasn't quite how I'd planned it, damn you coupons). This World Market binge basically means that if you know me in real life then you will be getting a Chocolate Orange for Christmas, because I have always loved them and they were made until 2005 in York, but are now made in Slovakia which is a bit crap really, yet I still bought fifteen. Approximately. Damn you Slovak sweat-shops.
  

That's it. I have approximately eight presents for Anna (and I am not extravagant, just sleep-deprived and forgetful) and one (1) present for Lucy - even though it'll be her first birthday only two weeks after Christmas. One day she will read this and hate me, but honestly, her favourite thing right now is a bath and that is cheap, cheerful and hygienic if a little hard to wrap. She is too little to count presents, wears all of Anna's old clothes, plays with all of Anna's old toys, and quite frankly will have more fun with the wrapping paper, blah blah blah.

Anna on the other hand is getting a little more sophisticated when it comes to Christmas. Remember last year's heart-wrenchingly cute Christmas list? Well, this year she's got a bona fide list involving My Little Ponies, Barbies and various other pink plastic rubbish. In my mad dash round Costco I bought a violently pink barbie complete with bejeweled pink horse (shoot me) and some much more civilized Playmobil horse and stable play thing. Anna has pretty much never played with her Playmobil plane and airport, but I love Playmobil and will keep pushing it on her especially if it's almost 50% off.

Now, I managed my sprint around Costco child free (gasp). I patted myself on the back for securing two good, solid, cheap presents. Then it occurred to me that I had no idea where I was going to hide them. I thought about sticking them in the attic but couldn't remember where LK kept the step ladder. I thought about Marge Simpson hiding things in the salad crisper - the one place Homer would never look. Where was the one place Anna would never look? My closet under some clothes? Under the bed? Well apparently I was wrong on that score because she found the painfully pink princess and was gazing longingly at it when I walked in to the bedroom the other evening.

"Look what I found Momma!" she gasped, clearly thinking that if you just wish hard enough these things appear in the strangest of places.

I explained that it was for Christmas, that she would be getting it, just not right now and bizarrely, she was fine with that. A little too fine, which makes me think I should check my crap-old-clothes bottom drawer and make sure it's still re-hidden there.

I can't hide everything in my bottom drawer though, and thanks to some careless internet shopping at 3am recently there is more stuff on the way.

Where do you hide your Christmas presents for the kids? The attic? The trunk of the car? Knicker drawer? Salad crisper? Under the tree (brave, trusting souls). Help is needed.

Nut Crack-Away, Nut Crack-Away, Nut Crack-Away!!

In England at Christmas I would have been taking Anna to the pantomime.

Oh no you wouldn't!

I love pantos, and I think Anna is on the cusp of really enjoying something like that. The audience participation, the cat-calling and throwing of sweets. She's still not very good with loud noises though - in fact at her school summer production she stood on the stage with her hands over her ears, declared 'it's too loud Mumma!' and exited stage left.

The Nutcracker is far more her speed, not least because she is a truly devoted ballerina and never misses an opportunity to launch in to an arabesque or a jeté. This can be alarming to fellow shoppers at the supermarket as very often it comes without warning.

I think it's interesting that the UK has the Christmas theatre tradition of more low-brow, vaudeville pantomime, while the US is all about the more high-brow Nutcracker. Or maybe I'm getting this wrong and posh kids in England go to the ballet at Christmas? I wouldn't know. It was panto or nothing for me. Growing up in the wilds of North Yorkshire we would always have a pantomime based on a fairy tale every Christmas but we very, very rarely had anyone famous in it. Even actors whose greatest achievement involves a walk-on part in Corrie draw the line at Harrogate theatre it seems.

Santa Barbara though, Lordy Lordy. Not only is it a small town with grand artistic ideas, but it also had two Nutcrackers going on this afternoon, across the street from each other, both starting at identical times. A bit of a minefield if you're meeting up with several other tiny ballerinas from Saturday morning dance class. The street was awash with red taffeta and black patent-leather mary-janes. Anna was so excited, I had to grab her hand to stop her pirouetting in to traffic. LK was gratefully at home watching golf while Lucy napped, perhaps for the first time realizing that being the father of two daughters has its advantages. Anna and I were having 'girl time' as Anna likes to put it.

I wasn't too worried about her sticking out the entire performance, we've been taking her to the movies off and on for about a year now. She will sit still for a couple of hours and is working on sotto voce comments, although this afternoon she did let the surrounding audience know that the ballerina doll in the first act had 'big boobies like you Mumma before they went soggy'. Nice. Plus she was being bribed with an ice-cream at the end.

The first twenty minutes were unbelievable. The dancers twirled in their 'deep dresses' (sighed Anna), I think she was genuinely overwhelmed by the immediacy of having real, live, ballerinas performing in front of her. She sat perfectly still, hands clasped, in obvious rapture. Then the toy soldiers fired a real cannon and I spent the next ten minutes trying to pry her hands off her ears. Still, with the cunning use of Cadbury's giant chocolate buttons meted out over the next hour we made it through the first act.

"Ice-cream" yelled Anna. The disappointment palpable when I broke it to her that this was just the interval. The second half was a lot of wriggling, a lot of hissed 'I want to sit on your lap Mumma', 'when is this over' and 'I want an ice-cream'. Fortunately this was a child-heavy audience so she was not in the minority. There was one bloke a few rows ahead of us who seemed to take every cough, comment or movement personally, but honestly, he was going to a matinee of the Nutcracker, was he expecting a child-free zone?

It's not a little sad that Anna's going to grow up without pantomime. Unless we make it over to England for a Christmas one of these years. I took LK about ten years ago and he had that indulgent smile he has for all things quintessentially English, the smile that says 'you're all completely bonkers'. Instead I can see a lot of Nutcrackers in my future. I'd better bulk buy the Cadbury's buttons.

Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing

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Tempus Fugit

Anna: Momma! Momma! Momma!
Me: What!
Anna: Momma! Momma! Momma!
Me: WHAT!

.....etc etc

Me: *sigh* Anna if you need something come downstairs please, I'm feeding Lucy
Anna: But Momma, I've been waiting since the dinosaurs.

The Girl's Got Talent

Any guesses as to what this could be?

Remember, when you say the wrong thing a 3 year-old's artistic dreams will be crushed for ever.

I'll put you all out of your misery in a little while.....

Easter - by Anna

Anna, the night before Easter -

"I know a lot about bunnies. I'm problee the world expert on bunnies. I know that bunnies like quiet. So if I hear some noise tonight I will go downstairs and say EASTER BUNNY! WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM"
























Easter Sunday - after finding lots of chocolate and having mellowed rather in her opinion of the Easter bunny she said:

"Oh, he is darling".

I don't know where she gets it from. Honestly. She's an absolute nutter.

Knickers!

Our house is overrun with small plastic animals and princess paraphernalia. It's as if My Little Petshop vomited over every room. Every day Anna takes all of her stuffed animals out of her room and all of her dresses from her closet and 'makes princesses'. It's not easy to stuff a seal in to a sundress let me tell you. However, this game usually occupies her for 30 minutes at a time and I will gladly deal with a partially-clothed princess-strewn room if it's given me a bit of peace and quiet earlier in the day. The issue is tidying up afterwards. Now I have glanced at enough parenting websites and taken enough triceratops to the instep to know that if I:

a) want to avoid throwing myself out of the window in despair I should

b) involve Anna in the process of tidying up.

You will read that 3 year-olds live to be given tasks and to feel useful. Unless they're completely wise to you and then your suggestions of cleaning up that jigsaw puzzle are met with 'no Mummy, you do it, you're so much better at it than me'. My withering reply of 'that's because of the practice, Anna' falls on deaf ears.


















I may be bloodied but I am not beaten and I am constantly trying to 'encourage' Anna to help around the house. And quite frankly, this maternity leave is killing me because spending too much time in our home is really opening my eyes to what a tip it is. It's so much easier to come home after a long day of work and be blinkered by exhaustion as to the state of the living room. Not so when you're sitting hour after hour nursing, staring at that tangle of VCR wires in the corner, or that parakeet bobblehead that's been collecting dust under the couch for three months. Solution to a dirty house - don't spend any time there!

There I was, faced with another mountain of washing and rather than head swiftly to the cocktail cabinet I decided to 'engage' Anna in the 'fun' of laundry. I explained that we have to separate clothes so that the colours don't run. I showed her how to make a pile of whites, darks and pinks (such is my life). Impressed by the novelty and unable to resist the genetic impulse to organize she set to work.

In no time we had a pile of whites, darks, pinks and knickers. Lots and lots of knickers. She had really taken the ball and run with it and no doubt disappointed by the comparative smallness of the knicker pile, had decided to add all her clean underwear as well. What these parenting websites don't tell you is that trying to involve a preschooler in any kind of productive activity inevitably produces more work, and in this case more laundry as there was no way I was going to sniff-test for freshness each pair of Dora knickers.

Knicker battle #1 fought and lost.

Then her knickers disappeared entirely. All of them. Not in her drawer, not in the laundry basket, not in a secret knicker stash - nowhere. I couldn't find any trace of them. I even checked to see if we had a cross-dressing guinea pig. Anna seemed as surprised as I was, suggesting that perhaps someone had 'borrowed' them. I renewed my search desperate to find a solution to Anna going to school in the morning clad in a Nemo swim diaper.

It was only after a full day of searching, and I started my routine de-princessing that I discovered this:





















....and all because I'd once told her that Princesses always wear knickers...

A Rolling Stone Gathers No Lyrics

At the beginning of the year we moved Anna to a new preschool. We (well, I) agonized over the decision, wondering if switching schools coinciding with adding a sibling would blow Anna's conscious world to smithereens.

Her old school used to be brilliant, we were absolutely thrilled to get her in there. No mean feat in this town. Then they expanded and suddenly her cute, artsy little school became a heaving morass of screaming toddlerdom.

Anna has never been particularly rambunctious, and she's definitely a follower not a leader. The sudden transition last year to a larger more impersonal school really shook her. We know that now. Suddenly six months after being potty trained she started having 'accidents' and crying at drop-off. Being pregnant, overworked and quite frankly oblivious to some pretty glaring signs of unhappiness I was clueless for a long time. I work long days and was dropping her off early when there were only a few other kids at the school, and picking her up late when she was one of the few remaining kids. It kills me that for so long I had no idea what a zoo the place had become.

Finally a friend of mine looking for preschools for her own daughter, visited Anna's school upon my recommendation and gently explained that Lord of the Flies wasn't exactly what she was hoping for at a billion dollars a month tuition. LK visited in the middle of the day after that and was pretty shocked. Anna was not an attention seeker, not a trouble maker, and consequently was being left to her own devices. She had been having accidents because as she explained later, she couldn't find a teacher to help her with her clothes.

Ouch.

Being a parent means assuming all sorts of guilt, and I feel terrible about what Anna had been going through. It took my friend and then another parent of one of Anna's friends to wake me up to what was going on. My drop-off and pick-up had taken all of 5 minutes each day, I was on a 'hello only' basis with all but one of the parents. I had written most of them off as unapproachable SB Bugaboo Moms. A little extra time, and a little extra effort to get to know the other parents might have clued me in faster. It was a stark lesson that I needed to get that insecure 'I'm not worthy' chip off my shoulder in front of terrifyingly wealthy and confident SB parents, for Anna's sake.

So, in January, just a few days before the tectonic shift of her sister's arrival, Anna started at her new school. It's a brand new place run by a favourite teacher from her former school. It's small, funky, laid back and friendly and we both love it. Her best friends from her old school also made the transition and Anna has blossomed in to a chatty (oh Lord!), confident girl who gives barely a backward glance at drop off. When she first started she would say every day in the car ride over there 'they will be so pleased to see me!' with the unconscious self-assurance of a happy child.

*Sigh*

I try and remind myself of that fact now that the commute to her preschool is 20 minutes not 5. Oh well.

I agonize over even the simplest of decisions, particularly those relating to my daughters, but this I think was a good one. Underscored by this little gem from a couple of days ago.

Anna (from the backseat whilst driving back from school): "We sang a new song today!"
Me: "Brilliant! Let's hear it!"
Anna: "Oh you can't always get what you wa-ant. Oh you can't always get what you wa-ant. Oh you can't alway get what you wa-ant."
*pause*.
"Oh you can't always get what you wa-ant. Oh you can't always get what you wa-ant. Oh you can't alway get what you wa-ant."
*pause*
Me: "but if you try sometimes, you get what you need?"
Anna: "No Momma! I'm singing..."
Anna (starting again): Oh you can't always get what you wa-ant. Oh you can't always get what you wa-ant. Oh you can't alway get what you wa-ant.

This continues for another 3 freeway exits, I'm practically crying with laughter wondering how you unstick a record if the record is your child when we finally fit the off-ramp, jolting my little Rolling Stone to say:

Anna: "Oh you can't always get what you wa-ant. But if you try sometimes you might get what you, oh Momma look! Purple and white flowers can I have some?"

That's an education worth paying for.

Advent-a-palooza

When we were growing up we had the same advent calendar every year. December 1st was always a picture of a Christmas pudding (I'm sure my Mum is looking at that very calendar right this minute thinking, *wow* she's right, maybe we should have splashed out on a new calendar every five years or so).

Times have changed, and also, this is America. No Christmas puddings, but also no cardboard advent calendars. Anna has a deluxe wooden model with individual doors begging to be stuffed with treats. Thanks to her ever-indulgent Nani, and the fact we thought she'd forgotten this year and had also bought a mini treat for each door, every day is opened to reveal a miniature cornucopia. Today she got a chocolate Santa, a plastic pig and a tiny wooden angel for the tree.

























This isn't going to be a post about spoiling your children, or about American largess, mostly because I love Christmas and I'm absolutely crackers about advent calendars (opening the same doors, and alternating days with my brother year after year only served to pique my excitement it appears).

What I want to write about is Anna's face when she eats candy. Something I want to put down on paper before she grows up and I forget forever. I should really work on taking a photo. I love the fact that candy for her is tantamount to a religious experience. Too many of us grab a chocolate and wolf it down whilst absorbed with something else. When Anna unwraps and eats a candy, time stands still. Her whole face transparent with enjoyment and concentration, radiating happiness. You can practically see her tastebuds firing. I know that very soon she'll grow out of this phase, that candy will be gobbled down like a dog ploughing through it's dinner, but as I steadily inflate with each passing pregnant day, I will try and remember how she savours every second of chocolately goodness, and try to do likewise instead of absent-mindedly inhaling a packet of Trader Joes Peppermint O's whilst cooking dinner.

I also love the fact that nothing, nothing, will get a 3 year old out of bed on a school day faster than reminding her that she gets to open another door on her advent calendar. I know most of you have normal children who rise with the sun, but my child was doomed by her genetics and will happily sleep til 9 (unless it's a Sunday of course, then she's all sunshine and 'look Mummy morning is here').

My Mom Is Having A Baby Sister

My pregnancy is inescapable these days. I've even started to do 'the waddle', the weight of my belly coupled with loosening pelvic ligaments means it's easier for me to move forward by lurching from side to side while swinging my legs forward than it is to walk normally. I let out an involuntarily 'oof' noise whenever I bend. The other day I dropped my car keys, and sighed, looking around as if to say 'anybody, help? please don't make me pick these up by myself'.

I look like a bad actor portraying a pregnant woman.

Obviously all this has not gone unnoticed by Anna. So the question is, how is she coping with the idea of being bumped along the food chain?

For months, apart from sporting her own phantom pregnancy, she really couldn't have cared less. In fact she could hardly be engaged on the subject. The first I heard of it was when one of her little school friends went crying to her Mum saying that Anna's Mom was going to have a baby sister and that she wanted one too. I was completely gobsmacked that Anna was even thinking about creature #2 let alone bragging. Things have changed though, and her baby sister is literally in her face. Nose to distended navel. We like to talk about how much work baby #2 is going to be, and how Anna will be my 'big helper'. She is assisting me in 'decorating' the baby's room which is beginning to take shape (although as you can tell by the photos below - we still need to paint). We bought a lovely changing table/dresser on Craigslist last weekend which Anna covered liberally in sea glass. How baby friendly! We have also unearthed all of Anna's old baby toys.



































Now, several people have told me that when a new baby arrives your older child will regress in some way. Some will revert to toddler-style temper tantrums, others will lose ground with potty training (please God, no). Anna is embracing her babyhood. The arrival of all her old baby toys means that's all she wants to play with. She's even started to demand we watch her old 'Baby Einstein' DVDs again. We draw the line when she starts 'pretending' to be a baby. Lying on her back waving her limbs in the air talking gibberish. It's laughably transparent. "Look! We don't need to introduce a new baby - I can be all the baby you'll ever need!".

We're trying to let her know that we loved her when she was an infant, but we love her even more now - now that she's a big girl and so accomplished. We try to emphasize all the things she's capable of that 'Fahan' won't be able to do, like helping to bake cookies, running through puddles, and drawing monsters - all the important stuff. It doesn't seem to be working though.

Anyone have any advice or suggestions in this area? So far we're humouring her, I assume it's a phase that she'll just work her way through, but right now I'm wondering just how far this regression is going to go.

Flushed Away

Thanks for all your suggestions on how to dispose of Lester. In the end we decided to be very matter-of-fact with Anna. We told her that Lester had had good life, but that unfortunately he'd died overnight and that we were going to flush him down the loo to the ocean (thankyou finding Nemo!).

We made a solemn grouping around the toilet, Lester hanging limply in a fishing net. LK spoke about how pretty he was, how he was always eager to zoom up and grab a pellet. Meanwhile I'm thinking, *damn* the only two things I could say about the bloody fish and you've already mentioned them. I gave a suitably sombre pause and waxed lyrical about how he'd always been a good friend to Anna and that we'd been lucky to have him as a member of our family. Anna was last. More than anything she wanted to flush him down, but we suggested she say something nice by way of a goodbye. She said 'I want you to come back from the ocean alive so that I can play with you'.

*Ouch*

Then it way bye-bye Lester, two of his mourners praying vehemently that he wasn't going to break up in the watery vortex.

In relaying the story to my Mum and Dad later that day, my Dad said 'she'll be looking for him whenever you go to the beach you know'. If only that were true! He was right in that she is looking for him, newly reincarnated from his trip to the ocean, but at his point of departure. She is fully expecting him to reappear in the toilet, ready to play. Honestly, best laid plans etc etc. We are going to have one seriously constipated 3 year old on our hands at this rate.

RIP Lester

When I was about 8 or 10, Mum told my brother and I over breakfast that there'd been a death in the family. Cereal spoons paused in mid-air. We went through our list of pets, which at that point in a child's life is always lengthy. It wasn't my gerbil, it wasn't my brother's gerbil, it wasn't their myriad (named) babies. It wasn't even the stray carrier pigeon which had taken to 'resting' on our back steps for the last couple of weeks.

We racked our brains, and I started to get worried.

'It's not Dad is it?'.

If you know her, you know my Mum is not exactly effusive, and having gone through our list of nearest and dearest fluffy creatures, he was the only available candidate.

Well, obviously it wasn't. Not even a Mancunian mother is that heartless. It was a goldfish, I'm not sure we even had a name.

Anna's beta fish on the other hand does have a name, Lester, and Lester's 'sleeping' right now on the bottom of his bowl.

Lester was a present from Anna's Nani, for Anna's first Easter which would have made him about 3 years old. It was a daunting to add another creature that required regular nurturing to a household already straining to cope with a doddery old guinea pig and a demanding 9 month old. Yet despite almost pathological neglect, Lester thrived. We tried to remember to feed him regularly, we even washed his bowl out once or twice, and he kept puttering along, much to Anna's delight. He even survived her increasingly inquisitive toddler and pre-schooler stages. He was frequently given 'apple juice to drink' or goldfish crackers were found bobbing on the surface of his bowl. She would introduce 'friends' or 'treasures' to his bowl - small plastic creatures or even worse, unsterlised beach glass and shells. More often than not though he would be found swimming for his life as she attempted to 'pet' him.

Lester was a survivor, until last night. We haven't broken it to Anna yet. Should you confront a 3 year old with the realities of death? Should he just disappear? We're not mad enough to replace him. Our household budget could barely stretch to those 4 pellets a day. Should we have an elaborate flushing funeral? Suggestions are very welcome as she's going to get a tad suspicious pretty soon - even Mummy doesn't sleep that long.

All I Want For Christmas

Driving home from school last night I asked Anna what she wanted for Christmas. I explained that sometimes people wrote letters to Father Christmas (I'm still labouring under the delusion that she'll say F.C. instead of 'Santa Claus' - it's not working). That if you explained to Father Christmas (say Father Christmas, say Father Christmas!!!!) what you thought you might like, then he would know what to tell the elves to make. The lies start early.

Her eyes grew round with the possibilities.

This is Anna's Christmas list:

• Candy
• Choclit
• A big bag of candy
• A small plastic squirrel
• A pink present with stripes and polka dots with candy inside

That is it.

I was going to write 'if only it was this easy every year' but seriously, where am I going to find a small plastic squirrel?

Errr, No

Anna: Dada?

LK: Mmm?

Anna: Will you put this booger back in my nose?

Christmas Photoshoot

LK's task this week (or if you believe him, task #1 of eleventy-billion) was to take a Christmas photo of Anna. I'm trying to get organized a little earlier than normal this year, for obvious reasons, and it was my goal to get the cards ordered this weekend, particularly as they will be winging their way around the world and not just California. I did get them ordered, but I thought you might be interested in the rejects. Well perhaps not 'interested' exactly, but this is NaBloPoMo after all and you'll chuffing get what you're given.

I do seem to have embraced this quintessentially American tradition of sending a photo-card for 'the holidays'. I draw the line at matching Christmas sweaters, and as long as I'm in charge you will never see me on a Christmas card, but it is nice to get a shot of people's kids particularly if you don't get to see them that often. Or are my hormones just out of whack? I'm interested in your thoughts on this actually - particularly the non-Americans - do you think it's showing off or lovely? (A Christmas card from us may or may not hang in the balance here).

Anyway, the direction was; red spotty cardigan, hair in plaits, on the beach, either the ocean or palm trees in shot.

I bring you, the pictures that didn't make it:




A little too 'God Bless America' for my taste. Wow, she's really channeling 50% of her heritage here isn't she?









Action photo - I call this one 'leap of faith' or 'don't shoot'.














Nearly but not quite.










This is without doubt my favourite, but it might cause my aged relatives to re-adjust their bifocals.














I also love this one, but it might cause a crick in the neck if it was on someone's mantelpiece (and of course it would be, front and centre damn it).

















My little ham.













Not sure if I should post the 'winner' as I'd hate to ruin the surprise, and you my faithful readership of 8 are probably all on my Christmas card list anyway.

She's Not Going To Thank Me For This....

This may be one of the posts I consider deleting when Anna is old enough to read more than her name.....

Recently Anna came down with a urinary tract infection. The truly wonderful thing about having a child over three is that they are much more able to communicate what is wrong. She'd started to have 'accidents' which is very unusual for her, but we were able to work out pretty easily that she'd been avoiding going to the bathroom as she confessed it was hurting her. Something that only 1 or 2 years ago would have been almost impossible to diagnose was blindingly obvious. LK sighed a big manly sigh, canceled his first golf game in months, and dutifully trotted his daughter off to the doctors. Diagnosis confirmed, I am a genius, Anna starts on some antibiotics, everyone's fine.

--- Incidentally we were told no more bubble baths for Anna - who knew? Well, perhaps we should have, but bubble baths are the prime culprit in causing UTIs in young girls. Bath time is a little less fun, but overall we have a much happier child. We knew she was getting better when she informed us that it didn't hurt when she used the toilet at S. and J's house. Obviously in her mind it was the toilet inflicting the pain, not the infection. Preschooler logic reigns supreme.

Now, here's the kicker. 3 year olds love learning new tricks. That's their raison d'etre, they thrive on figuring things out and mastering new arts. This has backfired more than a little in the K household.

What could Anna have learned at the doctors that is now causing us to watch her every move? Surely nothing that bad right? Well, apparently our little girl had to pee in a cup in order for the doctor to make his diagnosis (and kudos here for LK for not only missing his golf, but for actually being the one to collect the sample - what a hero). Anna was pretty taken with the idea of collecting a specimen. Very taken in fact. Now it's all we can do to stop her peeing in to a vessel every day. If we walk in to the bathroom there is usually a glistening beaker of toddler urine sitting by the taps, and one very chuffed 3 year old.

All I'm saying is, when you come over to our house, keep your wineglass with you at all times, and preferably drink red.

Halloween Candy

Anna is working her way through her Halloween candy. She has easy access to it because we are both too lazy to take her plastic Halloween jack-o-lantern off the floor and put it in the cupboard. No worries that she'll plough through it though as her 3 year-old-fingers are not quite dexterous enough to open the plastic wrappers. Path of least resistance parenting reigns supreme.

As a result she will always come to us with a piece of candy and some cunning 3-yr-old ruse asking us to open it.

Case in point this morning. She came running up, with a mini bag of whoppers (a bit like Maltesers for you Brits), and she said:

"Mom! You know what you and I both love?"

"Balls!"

Morning Glory

What's the first thing you think of when you wake up in the morning?

For me it's usually - is it a work day or a non-work day? Quickly followed by - how the chuff did she crawl in to bed again without me knowing, and how long have I been sleeping with a 3 year-old's bottom in my face?

The reason I write this, is, courtesy of waking up more often than not face-to-arse with my daughter, I am privy to her first thoughts of a morning (and some pretty healthy farts). Recently, they've been nothing if not bizarre (thoughts not farts - thank God). Clearly she's processing some important stuff in her sleep. She used to wake up and ask for 'Anna TV' or some 'cold milk' but these are just last week's gems - literally the first words out of her mouth:

'Mum, I was finking, what are those white fings either side of an elephant's trunk?'

'Hoop rhymes with loop!'

'Octopusses eat crabs'

'Mum, what kind of sea animal are you going to be for Halloween? I fink you should be a whale. A humpback whale. I will be a crab and Dada can be a eel'.

'Mum, you hold Dada's bottom..........and I'll hold his top and we can measure him!'

Square Eyes

How do you know if your child is watching too much TV?

Not necessarily when they can name all of the Backyardigans, or when they say 'I've seen this episode'. It's when they say:

"Mom, would you like to get more for your money?"

at least it was that and not:

"Do you have embarrassing odour, that itch you can't scratch?"

Daddy's Girl

As a parent you're not supposed to play favourites. On the whole I'm finding that easy, considering one's still in utero, kicking me in the bladder and causing me to pee when I laugh, sneeze, and move too quickly.

No-one tells a 3 year old they can't play favourites though, and I'm rapidly being demoted to parent #2.

This morning while HRH was sitting in the bath I told her that I would be watching her while Dad was in the shower, but that once he was done, I was off to work and he was going to be looking after her. I usually drop her off at school, but for once he had a late start and was on Anna-duty.

'Oh great' she said, more to her turtles than to me 'I knew a Dadda day would come up soon'.

To save on childcare, we have arranged our schedules so that I have Friday thru Sunday off and LK has Sundays and Mondays off, so Anna only has to go to school 3 days a week. I don't get to see LK that much, but after almost 15 years of being together, *shoulder shrug*.

Monday is LK's favourite day of the week, he takes Anna to the beach, to the swimming pool, to the Sea Center, the carousel, all over. On Fridays I take Anna to the supermarket, to my gym, and we do laundry. Hmm, I wonder why LK is winning parent of the year.

I realize my issue is not so much with Anna (although Jesus Christ beotch, I nursed you for chuffing months, throw me a frickin' bone here), it's with LK. It's getting the balance right. I am more interested in her having a presentable ponytail and outfit when she leaves the house. LK never adheres to a schedule and doesn't care when she turns up somewhere or how she looks. He's also far more creative than me. If I take Anna to the beach, we will look for shells, or more often these days, I will park my giant bulk on a towel and she will hunt for sea-life herself. When LK takes her, they pretend to fish for marlin and barracuda, they design elaborate assault courses and then race til exhaustion. Exhaustion seems to hit me a little earlier these days.

I know this is only going to get worse when the new little one arrives and I'll have to spend half my life nursing. I've decided to up the ante while I can. This weekend, I'm playing dirty. Anna and I are making cupcakes, going bug-hunting, watching Dora ad nauseum and going swimming. I will save the errands for LK for Monday. Then we'll see who's parent of the month.

Bwa-ha-ha.