An interesting dilemma has developed these past few weeks. One I suspect is not unique to our family. Since I am at home with Simone, and she sees me day in day out, she responds to my authority with reasonable affability. Not the case with Sandra, whose attempts at convincing Simone it’s time for bath or bed or cleanup or you name it have lately been met with howls of derision, flailing limbs, and many tears of despair.

This has a twofold effect on Sandra. First, she worries she’s failing in some regard, as she cannot get Simone to do her bidding…and I don’t mean in the forceful sense, but simply in the encouraging, convincing way parents work with their kids. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. Sandra is an exceptional mother, caring and understanding and intuitive.

The other side effect of such evening tensions is that they make it difficult to end the day on a positive note. Tensions at work (if existing) can also make for certain constraints in temperament at home. Simone’s outbursts simply add to this. What should be a gradual progression is now a teeth-grinding, loud event.

I chatted with Simone’s Wednesday child-minder and she also mentioned similar issues with her daughter, who expends a fair amount of energy rebuking her father’s attempts at evening rituals. She made some interesting observations which coincided with mine:

• Because Sandra is gone for most of the day, and only sees Simone for a concentrated period before bed, Simone’s emotions are jacked. She has all this anticipation and excitement and perhaps confusion as to how these feelings should be manifested, so she simply unloads–sometimes to a greater explosive degree than others.
• Bath time is associated, most likely, with the end of play time–and sadly the end of “mommy time” too. What kid wants that, especially when their parent has been absent for so long?
• It’s the end of the day when surely a child’s capacities are nearing an end–not to mention a parent’s.
• The parent who is at home during the day establishes parameters with their child over a longer period of time. The away parent not as quickly, simply because they’re not at home to do so. This is not a “good vs. bad” comment, but an observation. For the parent who works away from home, different methods are required to establish boundaries.

I don’t have the answers for this just yet. I like the idea of making bath time “fun”, but I think it has to be fun for both parties. So maybe the issue lies in making sure Simone knows Mom is enjoying the bath time too. Our childminder suggested dangling the feet in the tub with the child, or climbing right on in. The latter being a bit difficult if you ever saw the size of our townhouse tub. I can fit maybe one ass-cheek in there.

I’m interested in what other people’s experiences have been in this matter. I think this is most likely a universal issue. Of course, now I’ll get a comment where someone extols their child as angelic and never a problem. Right, well…up yours, then (kidding). The rest of you normal folk who recognize the keen lack of divinity in your children and their behavioral patterns–what say you?

On the subject of music, I have written to you about the importance of variety and emotion. I’ve also mentioned the significance of lyrics. And of course, you have sampled a host of songs from an insurmountable universe of selection. Many you love, some you appear indifferent to–both are valid responses. But for today, I will post your absolute favorite song for the past several weeks. A song you hear on the CD player or when Papa hums it while we walk. A song you sing along to in a clear, bright voice. Beirut’s Nantes.

I could not have picked a better tune myself, nor from a better album. So, I’ll add another of their songs, should I someday lose this album and become unable to conjure up a tune.

Sushi. Chopsticks. Sushi and chopstics. No longer are you satisfied with me preparing your california roll and letting you eat with your fingers. No siree. One look at my butchered methods of chopstick abuse and you had to get in on the action.

Sushi Monster

Sadly, no one warned you that prolonged exposure to brown rice, imitation crab, avocado, soya sauce, and thinly sliced carrots will cause you to react in strange and nefarious ways. Especially when it’s past your bedtime and 29 degrees outside.

Sprinkler Crazy

I rest my case.

A tad preemptive aren’t we? You still have two more months until you’ve hit the appropriate era for tantrums and lashing out and screaming and smacking Papa on the nose and so forth. And herein lies a situation I’m not familiar with. My whole life I’ve been short-tempered, which makes me wonder if you’ve taken on a few of my less-than-favorable traits.

Case(s) in point:

1. I ask you not to eat play-dough, which has to be covered with a host of nasty germs by now. You look straight at me, slowly lift the wad to your mouth, and take a huge bite, chewing, staring, chewing, until I come across the room and physically remove it from your mouth. At this point you scream loud and high enough to get all the dogs in the complex barking and begin unloading left-hooks on my head.
2. Mom lets you know it’s bath time, and you nod and head upstairs. Everything is fine. Clothes off. Naked girl hauling ass (literally) down the hallway. Happy as a lark, until she gets you into the tub. Then the thrashing starts. So much splashing I’m tempted to add a capful of detergent and toss in some clothes. You emit the sonar-like scream and go straight as a board while Mom tries desperately to clean at least a few of your more unsavory crevices.

One should point out that picking you up during these moments is akin to playing in traffic. My balls pucker every time I hold your flailing body upright. On more than one occasion your feet have pummeled my poor pills into a throbbing mass. Sad but true.

So, it’s the terrible twos, I know. Lamest term ever, especially when you consider what’s a stake. From what I’ve read, you’re not rebelling, but trying to articulate your desire to have an alternate choice than the one presented to you. In other words, your syntax hasn’t caught up with your desires just yet. Dr. Greene insists your tantrums would be like this even if you had the most perfect parents in the world. Not sure who that would be, but okay.

So it’s more a matter of finding methods to help you through this new phase. Providing you with choices, being calm and looking for the source of your frustration. Again, the onus falls on me–and the potential for failure. But I’m liking your sass, dear girl. I’m liking your passion.

Many of my Facebook friends have children, so it’s not like I feel special or anything. I like to stalk their profiles, check out all the pictures of their smiling kids’ faces, the drooly close-ups, the saggy diaper poses. But what I truly marvel at is those photos of family vacations where everyone is smiling and cavorting around in gentle breezes. If I’m not mistaken, at least four of these “friends” have embarked on family holidays, all with children of varying ages. Hawaii was the destination of choice, and there were plenty of photo albums to peruse. Smiling faces, waves, ancient volcanic rock, palm trees, natural parks, more smiling. All quite lovely. But do I believe it? Should I not, in true cynical fashion, wonder if these parents partook of a host of barbiturates upon arrival? Prozac? Perhaps they snorted lines of St. John’s Wart in the hotel bathrooms? I don’t know. I just wonder how they could go away for such great lengths of time and still return smiling. Gawd.

This weekend, we took Simone to Anvil Island for one night. That’s right, one night. We went up on Saturday morning, hopped in the boat, and skipped along Horseshoe Bay for about twenty minutes until we arrived at Daybreak Bible Camp, where our close friends are caretakers. Brilliant sunshine, shoulder rides along trails to hidden pebble beaches where we could collect sea glass, friendly cats that didn’t mind toddlers pouncing on them to give hugs, great food. An oasis away from the constant harangue of construction across the street from us and those idiot shit-heels with their bass-heavy car stereos. Mind you we were greeted by the sounds of a new roof being put on a cabin nearby, kids firing rifles at targets, and 150 hormone-crazed teenagers racing around the rental areas. Not to mention a wife who fell under the weather and a daughter who has consistently woken up at 5:30 am for the past several months, ready to assault the day.

One measly bloody night and we were so damn tired we almost slept in the car once we arrived back at our home. It was the kind of fatigue that grabbed you by the bowels and condemned your bones to future metaphors of mythological death. Of course, Simone was happy as a lark. Her parents? Asleep by nine-thirty, asses in the air like hippos stuck in shallow mud-puddles. One night of holidaying is all we could muster. What will come of our plans to disappear to San Diego during the Winter Olympics? Or how about visiting relatives? Hell if I know.

I’m still convinced our other friends are on opiates though. Hawaii for a week? What did they do, leave the kids in the hotel bathroom for most of the day? Sprinkle Ritalin on their Cheerios? Use those decibel-activated dog-collars that emit shocks of electricity when voices get too loud?

No, they actually didn’t go on holiday. Green screens, baby. Line the family up and pose in front of the green screen. Hawaii, my ass.

Oh to decipher your every whim, dear girl. The ones I can remember…

• ba-cue = vacuum
• pa-peesch = tooth paste
• a-o-ca-do = avocado
• dook? = milk?
• dig djuck = big truck
• noonyo = noodle
• tcheech? = eat?
• teech = teeth
• beeb = bib
• beep = dip
• peep = um…should be obvious
• chee-o = cheerio
• mowah = more
• tee-zjee = TV
• ja-jee = blankie
• chotchies = shoes
• dzoks = socks
• bup = up
• djok = walk
• zhug = hug
• tzat? = what’s that?

Other notables:

• whoa (combined with a frantic race to the nearest parent) = loud sound from kids next door
• zjoo-0oo-oo-oo-heer? = what’s goin’ on here?
• Papa? (combined with patting of couch) = I must drop whatever I’m doing, sit beside her and watch television until she’s satisfied.
• ee-you-pee = t-u-v of the alphabet song, repeated the entire way through.

Now hold on a minute. I don’t recall getting any memos about this. Now that you’ve discovered how to climb up onto the counters by pushing chairs up to them, you think you can just take over? I should think not. Here is a list of items I would like you to address immediately, dear daughter:

1. Please revert to eating everything on your plate. Don’t just eat the sweet stuff. Broccoli is good. Peas are good. Buns with jam are also good, but better when eaten with broccoli and peas. Water is good. Milk is good. Stop asking for juice. And since when do you want seasoning salt on your cucumbers?
2. When I say felt markers are for paper only, not your mouth, this does not mean pop the cap off of the black one and color your tongue completely dark. Same goes for your teeth.
3. Yes, Play Doh smells good. But it is not a part of your complete breakfast. Stop eating it. And why do you like the red stuff best?
4. When you wake up at 5:20 am, go back to sleep. Seriously. Or at least fall asleep when we bring you to bed with us. Don’t repeatedly smack Papa over the head or gnaw on Mom’s nipple until she gets mad. C’mon, now. Who taught you that?
5. Clean up time does not mean chucking all your toys under the couch to minimize the amount to pick up. They do not miraculously disappear when you do that. This is not a miracle. It means Papa has to lie down and reach around amongst the dust bunnies to find your Duplo blocks.

That being said, I’m glad you’re playing so well these days. When I take you to the park, you enter a state of perpetual motion. You greet kids, hug ‘em, show them various bits of twigs and dirt you find on the ground. I never know what the appropriate amount of interaction with others is. Am I supposed to let you run up to kids? Should I hold you back and teach you to say hello from a distance? No idea. I doubt all kids want to be hugged by you, or even want to be coerced into sharing their playground toy. You are fearless with them, willing to waltz right up to bigger kids and say mine, before barging in front of them on the slide. And no, I don’t allow for it, but secretly I marvel at your audacity.

One lady today, a school teacher, said all kids even out by the time they hit kindergarten. They learn the basic tenets of social interaction, whether they are shy or bold. I suppose there’s truth to that.

Now go clean up your blocks. There’s a hole in my foot from stepping on that last one.

Today at the park, you found yourself a friend. Pretty great to watch, I must say. You following this girl, Abby, around, trying to hug the living bejeezus out of her while she shrieked with laughter. She was older than you by a year or so, but you thought she was the greatest thing since applesauce cups. You had a tea party under the slide, threw wood chips on a baby quietly minding its own business nearby, but mostly you just chased each other and hugged. In fact, when her mother took her and her siblings to the field to play soccer, you stood at the wood-post perimeter of the park and said bye bye Abby over and over, waving your little arm. Almost made my heart burst, the way you love people with such reckless abandon.

I also noticed today, on the slide, your interest in the different Moms with their kids. You wanting to vie for their attention, like all kids do of their Moms. I think you sense your mother’s absence keenly during the week, a void I cannot fill, nor do I want to. But it got me thinking–which is probably a rare event in and of itself. What will you think of your Mom when you get older? Plenty of stories of adults pining for absent fathers who worked themselves to the bone, but were never around for their kids’ crisis. Will you think the same way, only of your mother? Perhaps if I tell you about her, you will gain an understanding. Since she is so unlikely to speak about herself, it may indeed be my duty to inform.

Your mom is a rare gem of infinite beauty, a persona made up of several identities. She is Mom, but she is also artist. She is creator, a person who sees story and image and light and deftly combines them into art. She senses the music of the world without having to speak about it (unlike your Papa, who comments ad nauseum). She is also reader, a person with a voracious appetite for words, for consuming them but also analyzing them. She sees different truths around her not because she’s been told to see them, but because she’s discovered them for herself. This makes her strong, Simone–something I see in you as well. She is fierce in her ability to see things for what they are. She is passionate about you, whether with us during play, or away at work. And she is irreplaceable.

But there is also an independence to her. She is not able to stay at home, day in and day out. And this has nothing to do with a lack of love, but a brilliant wildness to her that we should embrace. I am a home-body, and in some ways more suited to the routines of daily living with a child. This is not a commentary on talents, but of personality, I think. Our roles could easily be switched around and you would be none the worse for it. But I’m not sure it would suit your parents. Roles are not a matter of gender or tradition (thank goodness), but of personality. Your mother’s  absence during the day is both a necessity to our living but also to her sanity. Ugh, that sounded far more Oprah than I was intending.

What I’m saying with all this, Simone, is that she has the deserved right to be her self. And this right extends to you as it does to me. There are times, I’m sure she’d prefer nothing more than to be at home with us, unable to do so because of her obligations to work (I won’t concern you with that for awhile yet). But there are times when being away is right for her, when being at work provides an important part to her identity.

When you are older, Simone, and you find yourself looking for things to resent about your parents (don’t worry, we all do it). I hope you find this post. Not to curb your resentment, for all parents are deserving of it at some point or another, but to provide some insight–albeit subjective from my perspective, to who your mother is. I think you’ll discover most of this on your own, and probably find a better way to articulate it. But for now, this is your mother, as I see and love her.

Not sure how this came about. One minute I’m changing diapers, the next Simone and I are laying down some funky beats with her nose. If only there were a contest for this somewhere…

I’ve met people on both sides of the spectrum regarding this topic: should parents wander naked around their children? I’m not talking about nudist colony, let’s-all-spend-hours-getting-in-touch-with-our-various-orifices (sorry for any gross misrepresentation of nudist colonies world wide). Think more along the lines of hey, I need to shower and I’m not going to wrap my child up in a blanket and stuff her in the closet until I’m done. I guess the question is more along the lines of what is the proper amount of time to stay in the buff while the child wanders around the room? Some would say one must hop into their clothes, soaking wet if necessary, before submitting their child to such horrifying experiences. We will call these people the morning fart accident people (MFA’s, if you prefer). Others think, well, there’s nothing here my child won’t see at some point in their lives–save for this really strange collection of hives…

Well, this is how we roll at chez Tournemille–minus the hives part (seriously). Mom hops into an early morning shower while Simone stands at the glass and points and giggles and tries to open the shower doors before turning to rummage through all the drawers she’s not supposed to but now can because Papa is still in bed, slobbering in his sleep and Mom is out of reach. Later on in the day, Papa takes his turn with the same response from Simone. All part of the day, nothing odd about it. Except Papa likes to air-dry and shave and do all other manner of morning rituals while still in the buff. Why? Because he’s always done it this way. It’s not like Simone has known any different. Even Mom prances and preens in her birthday suit. And why not? Nobody’s called the Nudie Police yet. No harm, no foul. Until…

This morning, I’m shaving a delicate line around my beard, concentrating, making sure not to nick the little in-grown hair that is proving to be the bane of my existence. Simone is in the bedroom, presumable reading a book, or picking out my shirt for the day (which she often does). I finish my precarious razor-work and go to rinse the blade when eeeeeek, a cold hand reaches up and honks the ol’ tallywacker like a bicycle horn.

WHOA, no no no noooooo.

A host of giggles

Seriously, that is not a suitcase handle. Hands off missy.

Whasss dat?

Um…err….a penis? Not sure why I answer with a question…probably because I hate the word penis.

More giggles and she reaches for it again. I deftly knock her hand away, spin her around, out the door, to the dresser.

Go find me a shirt.

It appears my days of air-drying are numbered.