At the dinner table this evening Dawn and I were discussing that Hillary had finally conceded. Our daughter, who had met Hillary last year (Hillary asked how old she was and Penelope stared back like a deer in headlights), said to me:

I’m not grown up yet but if I was I would vote for Hillary Clinton because I’m a girl and she’s a girl.

I’m glad Hillary lost the nomination, but she sure has made an enormous impact on women, young women and littler girls everywhere. Penelope will grow up never doubting whether a woman can or should be President. Mission accomplished Hillary.

My daughter recognized the letter P on our grocery list this afternoon. I seized upon this opportunity to play teacher and we began exploring all the words that start with the letter P. At some point we both ran out of words and their was a long pause in the car. She then said the following very quickly and with an excitement of discovery that is hard for adults to capture:

“Paul Simon starts with P - hey, Dad there’s the letter P and the pee that comes out of your vagina!”

Made using my daughter’s belly button, Big Huge Labs and Flickr.

There’s a 12′ x 8′ concrete pad along our property line in the back yard. The previous owner started putting old branches and leaves there - I suspect this is where they routinely burned yard waste. They never got around to burning the last pile, which nearly covered that pad, and so it began to mulch and become an ideal spot for a tree.

When my family decided to reclaim the concrete pad to build a play house for our daughter, my first instinct was to take down the young tree (about 8 feet tall) and remove the compost. But my neighbor and Dawn pointed out how nice a tree it was and so I set out to move it. I spent about 3 hours yesterday using a spade and a large flat shovel to carve out the tree and a large section of compost (where the roots were) in order to move the tree. As I was working to remove the last bit of compost before moving the tree, Dawn showed up with our daughter.

I took the flat shovel and chopped a big section of the compost off from the section I was going to move with the tree. I was working hard, violently chopping this bit of compost off and then once I got it free, without pause I turned the shovel and scooped it up and tossed it several feet into the new pile.

Penelope shouted and dove in front of me, scooping something from the ground. She held up a baby mole. I was shocked and frightened. I looked around frantically, searching for the other baby moles I had inadvertently chopped to bits. I needed to hide them before my daughter saw the carnage her daddy had committed on the innocence in her back yard.

There were none to be found. I was puzzled. I decided to scoop out some of the loose mulch from where I had just been digging and chopping. I gently slid out a section about 8 inches high that began toppling over as I pulled it out. It was all leaves, and moles. Suddenly there where half a dozen or more baby moles wriggling around on the concrete.

My daughter hurried to scoop them all up while Dawn and I frantically worked to get their bedding moved over to the new compost pile. We made a new hole and put the bedding and moles inside and covered it up with leaves and more compost. Dawn mentioned that moles have a very good sense of smell so our hope was the mother would return and be able to find their new location several feet from their previous burrow.

This morning I checked on the new hole, gently feeling around in the bedding and there were no moles. Hopefully the mother found them.

That could have gone soooo differently. In trying to save a tree, and send the right message, I nearly slaughtered several baby animals in front of my 4 year old - who is passionately in love with all baby animals on the planet, whether they be worms or elephants.

I need to write a book on parenting. The parenting books I’ve read thumbed through held in my hand really don’t provide accurate descriptions of the real challenges of parenting nor the solutions to get you through those challenging moments/days/weeks/months.

First let me say that what I’m going to describe is not intended to convey a lack of appreciation for my child, but rather a lack of preparation on my part to know how to deal with her endless, unexhaustible “wonder”.

I stayed up late the other night and was woken up by loud singing at 5:50am the following morning. As tired I was, and as cranky as I wanted to be for being woken so early, I felt great joy in hearing my daughter sing with the passion of a broadway performance, her own made up song. I found myself, along with ever bird within a mile, in envy of the energy she summoned at that early hour.

It would be about twelve hours later, while staring at the clock on the wall, that my envy would turn to disbelief and shellshock over my daughter’s sustained level of energy through the entire day.

For those without kids, the best way to describe the day I’m referring to is this: imagine yourself at work for a day. A normal day with a handful of meetings to attend, lunch, phone calls and trips to the bathroom and water cooler and eventually home for dinner. Now take that normal day and image your very smart boss is with you the entire time and he/she’s your best friend. Now imagine that your boss is drinking ten cups of coffee an hour.

You’re almost there.

It’s critical in the above example that your boss is very smart. Because like a smart boss, you want to be able to answer your child correctly. In fact there’s a lot of pressure to do so - you don’t want to screw this job up and possibly get fired. Of course the questions your boss will ask you are nothing compared to the ones a four year old will drill you with.

What is your favorite color?
Why is yellow your favorite color?
Why is the sun yellow?
Where does the sun go at night?
But where is it?
But why is it there?
Why does it go there?
Hey look Daddy a bunny in the driveway!
What’s that bunny doing in the driveway?
How many squirrels live in that tree?
Why did you turn here?
Who’s on the phone?
Why did they call you?
What was the name of the brown flying dinosaur that was with Petrie’s Uncle?

That list of questions represents three blocks in the car on the way to school. I think I successfully and truthfully answered about two of those, possibly the first F- I ever got.

There are breaks from the questions, and those moments are filled with announcements. On the surface this sounds like a break, but in reality its like a lightning round in a game show. Because the statements come much more quickly and are really a question in that they require an answer, but unlike a question, you have to guess (quickly) what is the question behind the statement. Thankfully there are dozens of patterned responses you can memorize. It’s like an advanced game of red light green light. Get ready.

Daddy I’m bouncing! (go look)
A bird! (go look)
Wipe! (she needs her bum wiped)
I’m hungry! (cook food)
I’m downstairs! (go find her)
I’m sliding! (go look)
I’m dancing! (go look)
Daddy! (go find her)
I’m chewing with my eyes closed! (go look)
Bulldogs have big cheeks from smiling so much! (an opportunity to turn the tables - “why do they smile so much?”)

The hardest part isn’t making it through that day but realizing after counting the last 2 hours until bedtime that I forgot most of the funny and interesting things she said and I can never go back in time. And so that night I fell asleep, late again, anxious and making futile preparations for the next day of ten thousand questions and announcements.

On the drive to school this morning my daughter explained it to me:

“I love Benji, Benji loves Mira, Mira loves somebody else.  Isn’t that funny dad?”

Hmm, accessing memory banks . . . nope, I don’t ever recall a love triangle being funny.  Painful, melancholy, depressing and heart wrenching are the words I would use to describe that situation.

I used to be envious of 18 yr olds, now I’m envious of 4 yr olds.

The other day on the ride home from school I was asking my daughter how her day went.

She told me that she had pretended to be a witch at school:

“I put a broomstick under my vagina because that’s what makes you a witch.”

If you’ve ever been a stay-at-home mom or dad in the winter, you’ll understand why I am working on this. It’s very easy to feel overwhelmed, depressed or just plain claustrophobic when you are stuck inside day after day with nowhere to go with your little one.

About a month ago, I posted about a group of moms organizing an indoor play center for Fairfield. Here is an update.

The Park and Recreation Department has agreed to house the play center in the Roosevelt Center! Yahoo! Thank-you Parks and Recs!

Now, all we have to do is raise the money. ;-) Around $15,000. We are looking at a number of different ways to raise funds. One nice thing is all donations can be tax-deductible due to Parks and Rec’s Foundation.

We will have a booth at the indoor market to sell baked goods and crafts like cards. There will also be a craft table for the kids. We will approach the local clubs, organizations and businesses and there will be donation jars placed around town.

Please keep an eye out for us and help when you can! If you would like to volunteer to help with the Indoor Market please email me at dawn.merydith(@)gmail.com

Sunday while having brunch at Cafe Paradiso, my daughter and I were drawing with crayons on the table. I drew a clown and started to color in the hair red. My daughter grabbed my hand to stop me from coloring, picked up another color and said to me, “Daddy, clowns have grey hair.”

I’ve been trying to find ways to make playtime more enjoyable for me as well as my daughter when we play together. My mind was growing numb from acting out the lives of the Calico Critters family of baby bunnies, squirrels and bears. So I latched onto my daughter’s interest in Thomas the Train, and got her a train set for her birthday. I even got extra track to allow for more exciting configurations other than the standard loop.

It’s great. The engines are battery powered, and the parts are large and durable enough for my daughter to enjoy. The set came with several cars, allowing you to haul everything from milk to logs to passengers. It wasn’t long before we were I was making up scenarios about hauling goods from location to location. Wood comes from the forest back to the factory to make lumber to build the new school. And just when I was thinking to myself, hmmm, I wonder if I am making these scenarios a little too dry for her, she introduced her own scenario that answered my question (as in yes I was).

Thomas the Train, and all his track, is now devoted to hauling the baby Calico Critters . . . wherever they wish to go. The train station is now the Calico Critters school, and the logs are now food. And of course the babies have plenty of milk with them (about 10,000 gallons). I now have my own little tiny loop, separate from the rest of track, to run my own train “around the pool”.

Works for me.