We're not Making This Up

Overheard on the bus.
Scruffy Guy: Have you ever considered a career in panhandling and being drunk all day?
Young Chick: uh, no. YC put a handkerchief to her nose.
SG: Would it help if I was a Muslim?
YC: no
SG: Good 'cause I'm white.

Later, off the bus, SG to friend: Dude, she was so into me.

A Family Friendly Game

Spend a day hanging out with your four year old. Count the number of strangers she makes smile. Aim for double digits!

Order of the Fatherhood

Little did I know that, when Wrigley was born, I was secretly initiated into a fraternity of fathers. We tend to walk around public places, mostly on weekends, hand in hand with our children, slightly dumbstruck. When we make eye contact with one another, we hold it, grin sheepishly, and exchange this simple, non-verbal message: what the hell were we thinking?

I can't wait to learn the handshake!

Wricasso

I know that every parent has pictures like these, but they are fairly new in our household, so I can't resist posting several of them. I think they are great!

Mommy


This was copied from a book Diary of a Worm. The worm is on the left with a red baseball cap and the jewels make a baseball.


Yellowland


This is from a whole traffic light series. The traffic light is there in the black with red, white and green jewels. The black line across the top is the wire and down below is a car with lots of wheels.


Maryann from Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel is very popular these days. Here is a picture of her stuck in the cellar.


Even more popular than drawing pictures of Maryann is spelling her name on everything. Wrig has is memorized now, though I just discovered that we've been spelling it wrong. There should be an E on the end. She's been notified. Normally Wrig writes clockwise but in this one she started in the bottom right. Oh, and that T is really a Y.

What a Day, What a Day

Soon they are going to declare February Come Visit Portland Month. Last year we had amazing weather. So far this year the February weather has been good, and today was amazing. We went to the park and it was packed! All the swings were full, as were the teeter totters. The sea gulls (!?) in the duck pond were getting fat from all the people feeding them. The poor ducks didn't get much because the sea gulls are so much bigger. Some highlights:
Skipping


Balancing


Petting


Running


More balancing


We found these under some conifer. Between each layer is a paper thing helicopter type seed pod. Very delicate and beautiful. Wrig found a huge one of these and carried it around in her dress that we tied up so she would have a kangaroo pouch. It bounced out eventually and broke into two. It was the biggest disappointment of the week with lots and lots of tears for her broken joey. Anyone know what this is? It wasn't from the Monkey Puzzle tree. It was a very fine needled conifer.


By the way, you may have noticed that Wrig got her hair chopped off. Ed is now off taking Wrig to get her hair cut duty. I don't mind so much that Wrig got it so short. She's been wanting that for a while now. It is just a really bad very much bowl cut. I need to figure out how many weeks I have to wait before I can get it redone well without letting her know her hair was butchered.

So I cried today at the library ...

When we go to the library to read, Wrigley is in charge of picking out the books. Sometimes she brings me board books. Sometimes she brings me books in Spanish. Sometimes she brings me books that are way over her head.

Today, she picked out Bravemole.

Bravemole tells the story of an ordinary, average-Joe mole. He's a husband and a Daddy, working a humdrum job. One day, two "dragons" attack the two tallest "molehills" in the city. All the moles are terrified, but many - including Bravemole - work together to clean up the destruction.

As I told Wrig on the way home, the book reminds me of something sad. You see, I told her, Bravemole is kind of a true story, only it's not about dragons and it's not about moles.

Bravemole is by no means a perfect book - I'm not even sure I'd highly recommend it - but about a page and a half into it, I started feeling choked up. I'd have to stop at least once a page, often more than that, to gather myself before I could continue reading. By the end, I was stopping to wipe away tears. The book brought me back to where I was in September, 2001, a month before Wrigley was born. It reminded me of the fear in my students' voices that day. It reminded me of crying every day on the way to work, listening to the somber voices on NPR, telling the tales of the lost. It made me remember the shocking nobility of police officers and fire fighters racing up the stairs of a burning building. Who knew such honor existed in the 21st century?

I confess, it's been a long time since I've been in touch with that fire of patriotism, that sense of hope derived from one mole's - I mean one person's - willingness to sacrifice.

And I cannot express how furious I am at our president, who has squandered the goodwill of the entire world. When I hear him say "9/11" I hear it as propaganda; I hear it as fear mongering. I hear it as another cynical, failed campaign promise.

Thanks, Bravemole, for reminding what September 11, 2001, really means.

And thanks, Wrig, for letting me cry while reading a kid's book in the library today.

I wonder what he literally meant when he said WMD ...

According to Liberal Media Conglomerate Knight-Ridder:

One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said that the president didn't mean it literally.

That clears things right up, doesn't it?

The Things We Negotiate

For the most part when Wrigley wants to do things herself, I let her. She makes her own cereal, pouring the milk directly from the carton and makes herself all sorts of food. She zips up her own coat even though it takes about 12 miszips and an hour for her to do it (okay, I admit, some days I say cheerfully, "oh let me get that," and I zip it before she has a chance to protest). She gets to spill a little of the flour and the salt and the water and the rest of the ingredients when we bake. Today at lunch Wrigley wanted to pour the syrup on her peanut butter pancakes (yum!). I draw the line at syrup. While any spill would probably not be much more than the few drips that happen when Ed pours his own syrup, I can envision the table, chair, floor and two people irrevocably sticky. I let her know that she could pour her own syrup when she's a teenager. Wrigley says, "hmmm, I think nine would be a good age."
"That sounds good to me," I tell her. We'll see when she's nine.