UPDATED- Mommies, Daddies, Babies. More of them.

Remember how Ann has a compulsive need to classify everything based on size? She has extended that compulsion to the dukies in her diaper. After she has done her business she comes to tell me (the frustration of which only parents of toilet-training children will understand), and we scurry off to take care of it. After her diaper is undone, she pushes herself up on her elbows to see what is going on down there. She evaluates the size, pauses, and then declares 'Baby Poopie!' as she sagely nods her little head.  Depending on its size, obviously.  It might be a 'Daddy Poopie!', in which case we call Daddy in so that he can see it. Which he appreciates. Obviously.

The interesting thing is that a homogenous mass in a diaper can be either big or small.  It's very difficult to quantify medium unless there is something to compare it to.  So you never hear "Dat's a Mommy Poopie!". 

I wonder if I should use it as an example to reinforce alternative family models.  But there's something weird about referencing your child's imaginary poop family, I suppose. 

Damn you Ikea.

Last week I visited Ikea to get a light for our living room.  Due to space constraints in that corner, it needed to be something that could hang from a hook on the ceiling.  Unfortunately, when I got home I realized that there was no on/off switch for the light (seriously Ikea?  I think you are taking simplicity too far).  Because the wall outlet is blocked by the couch, this means that to turn off the light, you turn the bulb a quarter-turn counter-clockwise.  Which was exactly what I did last night before bed.  Fast-forward forty minutes, when the light TURNED BACK ON.  By  ITSELF.  I awoke- confused and terrified.  To any normal person, the natural conclusion is: 'Man, I didn't turn the bulb far enough- it's gonna do this all night.  I should go fix it'.  To someone who watches too much Supernatural and has no common sense, it clearly means that there is a ghost in the house and we were all going to die.  Fixing the bulb is what the ghost wants you to do.  That's when the first victim (usually a pretty woman- confound my natural good looks!) dies.  Probably by Ikea cord strangulation.

I lay there for half an hour, heavy with the responsibility of being the one awake and aware of danger.  Why is it always me? Several times I almost woke Adrian to talk to him about it, but he was getting up at 5:30 to catch a flight to Vancouver and we know how territorial he is about his sleep.  If I woke him and he couldn't get back to sleep, he'd be all 'remember that time you woke me up to turn off the light?' for like, ever.  And then, the light TURNED OFF.  This was even worse, because now I was IN THE DARK and pretty sure I was having a heart attack.

Unfortunately, the light bulb wasn't the only problem.  The front screen door wasn't latched, and the occasional creak and scritch was terrifying.  Additionally, the porch light was on.  At this point, I was alternating between vigilantly watching the bedroom door for anything amiss, and leaning over the headboard with my face pressed against the window, checking to see if we were being robbed from the porch.  It's funny how once your imagination takes off, it doesn't pick between genres.  Ghosts and home invasion both seemed equally as likely and imminent.  I was leaning against the window when the wind caught the door and slammed it.  My heart contracted so hard that the left side of my body spasmed and I slipped from my kneeling position, landing with my hand on Adrian's face.  He was awake now.  Words were exchanged, and it was decided he needed to go fix the light, latch the door and turn off the porch light.  On his begrudging way out of the bedroom, he turned and said 'This won't turn out well for me'.  What he meant was 'I won't be able to go back to sleep, thanks', but to someone with a self-diagnosed nocturnal anxiety disorder I heard 'The zombies are coming.  I'm going to die', and nearly peed my pajamas.

Anyways, we both made it back to sleep, and Ann let me have a sleep in.   So the moral of the story is-  the Swedes are unreliable in their light fixture design.  And I should probably seek help.

More adventures in hair.

I thought this would look excellent in Ann's hair.

NAILED IT!  It's, like, identical!

I resent the impact your traditional home is having upon my child.

Ann is surprisingly traditional in her ideas about family, no matter how I try to expand her world.  For example, the other night we were working on identifying letters.  She has NO time for this and generally ignores me when I ask: "Tell me Ann, what starts with T?  T-t-t-t-...........? T-t-t-t-.........tiger?  T-t-t-t-toast?".
T-t-totally stonewalls me.  So I was surprised last night when she was all into the letter 'P'.  "What starts with 'p' Ann?  P-p-p-...penguin?"  I was delighted when her eyes lit up with interest.  "What else starts with 'p' Ann? P-p-p-p..?"

"Daddy penguin!"

"Well... I guess so.  Another penguin that's a daddy does still start with 'p'.  I suppose technically we're spelling the actual noun.  But I feel like you're missing the point.  What else starts with 'p'?  What about..p-p-p-popsic....."

"Mommy penguin!"

"Well, yea, but-"

"Baby penguin!  Gramma penguin?  Grampa penguin!"

Learning our letters has become a frustrating and increasingly pointless activity.   All this nuclear family fixation is impenetrable.  Everything needs to be broken down into its components of mommy, daddy, baby, gramma, grampa.  Anything we see- kitties on the street, crabs in the tank at the grocery store, fish at the aquarium (and there are a LOT of fish at the aquarium) need to be classified by her taxonomic little mind.  Demoralizing, given the emphasis I have put on alternative family examples with her toys, her stories, her real-time role models.  But no, pieces of rice cake are sorted according to size and relegated into their domestic roles.  Story-time has become another excrutiating affair:

"One day, Bird and Raccoon were playing ball, but then Raccoon accidentally hit Bird with a ball!"

"Little ball!"

"It is a smaller size isn't it?"

"Baby ball!"

Well, I suppose comparatively speaking--"

"Where Mommy ball?"

"Well..."

"Where Baby Ball's Mommy?"

"Well...  I don't know honey."

"Where Daddy Ball?"

Well..."

"At Gramma Ball's house?  Where Gramma Ball?"

You could see how this extremely frustrating line of questioning could go on forever before I were to even get past that first page.  I suppose I could try to explain that the ball is an inanimate object that was created by a manufacturing plant from its components of different plastics with high carbon content.  Therefore having no mother or father.  Seems a bit heavy and exhausting for a Thursday night story session though.

After the stories are finished, the daily rendition of 'Old MacDonald' goes on for effing ever because with each new animal, we also have to include all applicable members of the immediate and extended family.  And the McDonald farm is pretty large in our house.  Many, many different species of poultry.  It is getting quite tricky to get her into bed before prime-time tv starts.  Some nights have been touch-and-go.

I suppose that when she is a bit older we can have some more in-depth conversations about non-traditional families, but for the moment she just stares at me blankly when I describe rates of 19% homosexuality in mallards.  And you know that homosexuality in mallards will just segue to conversations about other animal sexual behaviours.

You're right.  I should probably just wait until she's at least in kindergarten.

He may die early, but at least I've got good dinner party fodder

Adrian is a terrible sleeper, have I mentioned that before?  He has this 30 second window, and if he's woken in the middle of the night and isn't back to sleep before the window closes, he's up for the day.  He is possibly one of the kindest people on earth, but heaven help you if you read late with the light on or try to talk about a nightmare you just had.  Anyways, babies and toddlers being what they are, I'm pretty sure that having a child has taken more years off of his life than is normal.  It's also given him some pretty irreversible bags under his eyes.

Unfortunately for him (genetically because of him perhaps?), Ann is below average on the sleep spectrum as well.  Since we've moved to Victoria, at some point every night she comes into our bed.  We could probably correct this, but some time ago we underwent a form of sleep training called 'camping it out'.  This is a gentler form of 'crying it out', but nearly killed me nonetheless.  We are both unwilling to do this again, and so will bide our time until we can reason with/bribe her.  In most other ways she is pretty awesome, easy-natured and agreeable, so I can allow her a flaw or two.  In our bed she stays. 

She sleeps in the middle, and invariably rolls toward Adrian in the middle of the night (the slope towards him is a little steeper) until he is pressed up against the wall with Ann snuggled right in, all elbows and knees.  She'll snore and roll around and at about five she'll demand he get her a bottle, and so his day begins!  Poor bastard.  Between four and six last night I kept rousing to see her with her fingers under his chin "Tickle you, Daddy!  Tickle tickle!".   If it didn't have such an impact on his health it would be hysterical.

So he has taken to sleeping in shifts.  Every night at about nine he falls asleep on the couch until bedtime.  A kinder partner would consider adopting an earlier bedtime, but instead I take notes on the ridiculous things he says in his sleep and trot them out when we have company over. 

I'm all about finding a silver lining somewhere.

Fibbing- UPDATED

As you may recall (see below), my daughter has been experimenting in not telling the truth.  Last night at dinner was one of those times.  I just happened to be shamelessly bribing her with Halloween candy to eat her lentil soup.  All she had to do was eat one last spoonful with- gasp- one carrot on it, and she could have some smarties (smarties are a new love.  She calls them 'motties'.  Or 'botties', it's hard to tell with a 2yr-old.  This new obsession has just happened to coincide with potty-training, and as 'potty' and 'motties' can sound very similar, for a full day I was super excited that she was so into the potty).
She is very good at keeping food in her mouth for extended periods of time to spit out in some inconspicuous spot later, so I've taken to checking her mouth after dinner.  I checked it- clean- but something seemed fishy, she never eats carrots without dramatic flailing!  Sure enough, upon second examination, there was the carrot- UNDER HER TONGUE.  Where do they learn these tricks?  She's not in daycare, so she must have figured it out on her own.

Diabolical genius, that one.