my daughter

She is a doll. And a demon. Today I caught her dragging a giant box of salt around the house and salting things. The rug, the legs of the tables, the bathtub. Part of a Satanic cult? Salting the earth so the next tenants with have a barren life in our apartment?

We have been spending a lot of time at a small playground in Griffith Park. It has a slide with rollers, and she loves to climb to the top and fling her collection of marker caps off the top and watch while they bounce and spin and land in the sand.

When one of us leaves the house, she stands at the screen door and says, without worry, "you'll be back really soon, OK?" And, when one of us leaves the room while the other stays to tell her stories she always asks if we will be driving to work. This questions comes with a hint of worry.  When we say, no, not driving, we'll just be working in the Project Room, she is very relieved and comes to give us a kiss and hug goodnight.

It kills me...

If I had to describe my childhood relationship to fear, I would say I was afraid of everything all the time. Chernoybl, alien abduction, the holocaust, Hiroshima, ghosts, poltergeists, wizards, the Mayan calendar. I could really go on and on about this, filling an entire blog devoted solely to my fears circa 1982-1990.

Which is to say, when P. says "Mommy, I'm very scared right now," it is almost physically impossible for me to leave the room. Last night, she was wound-up and afraid of everything. The clock was scary, bats were scary, the lights on the ceiling were scary. So I stayed awake with her for hours, telling stories and talking about monsters and bats and glowing lights.

Parenthood is really, really a trip.

isms

These vanish so quickly. "When you sneeze, you say Gnundhite." "I love your comprinter." See, I can't even remember the others. They are already gone.

the fun doctor

A blurry picture, but I liked it.

This is at the bookstore on our way home from visiting the speech pathologist. P. had been stuttering a bit, so the awesome pediatrician referred her. Mostly P. played on the floor while I answered a ton of questions. It was nice for me to think about some of these things (when did she start crawling, what was her first word, etc.) Then the woman asked P. a number of questions about sequencing and plurals and prepositions. The verdict was that her language is fine, that she seems to have outgrown the stuttering, and that she is a happy and smart kid. I will sit in any waiting room watching The View for an hour to have someone tell me that. And hopefully the "fun doctor" will help with some of P's serious doctor-related anxiety.

hello future

P., like many kids her age, approaches all window-shaped objects as though they are touchscreens. Computers, actual windows, cameras. She swipes at all of them. Okay, fine.

But lately she has taken to "charging" her playmobiles. Even the horses need to get charged before they are ready for use.

quotes

"What that could be?"
"I have idea. We go camping in nature."
"I'm not Nelope, I'm mommy." (dissolve into giggles)
"Mommy. I have sprise for you. I love you."

2013

We are deep into the world of short sentences that end with question marks. "I go Grandma's house, see everybody, OK mommy?" "I eat candy for dinner, OK mommy?" "Mommy and Nelope go bouncy house tomorrow, OK mommy?"