komplexify!

Dear Ladybug,

Wednesday not only marked the fiftieth monthly anniversary of your birth, but also your first paycheck.

Well, dollar bill, actually.  I was working on the lawn, and as usual you decided to assist me.  Typically, your assistance consists of four duties: (1) grabbing grass bags from the garage and opening them for me, (2) sweeping up errant grass in an attempt to clean up the mess I leave behind, and (3) pretending to mow the lawn with your bubble mower along with me, and (4) providing constant encouragement in the form of exclamations such as “Good job Dad!” or “The lawn looks beautiful!” or “You’re almost done, and then you can get a Coke, and I can get a Tummy Yummy!”  In fact, it’s the last one that really explains your left-field love of lawn care: whenever I’m finished, I dump my lawn clippings and then get a soda for myself and a Tummy Yummy for you.  Tummy Yummys are these little bottles filled with neon-colored form of sugar water billed as a “juice-like beverage.”  Equivalently, it’s hummingbird goop sold to toddlers.

However, when we finished with Wednesday’s lawn work, you announced that in lieu of a Tummy Yummy, you would rather have a dollar.*  I really couldn’t argue with that, on the twin grounds that (a) your mother hates it when I get you a sugary drink and (b) a dollar is actually less expensive than a Tummy Yummy.  Interestingly enough, the very next day you volunteered to scrub the toilet for another dollar, to which I again happily agreed again.  By the weekend, you had a whole $3.50 of “chore money” burning a hole in your pocket, which you’d managed to earn by opting to do chores with (or in some cases, for) me.

* You actually pronounce it as a DOUGH-lar, with significant emphasis on the first syllabus, like a mini Scrooge McDuck.

It didn’t last long.  On Sunday we headed to the mall expressly so you could purge your piggy bank.  Specifically, we headed to Claire’s, which is like a crack den for pre-tween girls.  After a hour of deliberations, you settled on glitter nail polish and a week’s worth of stick-on earrings with matching crown rings.  Unfortunately, it turns out that the nail glitter scratches off almost immediately, and the earrings only adhere to your ear lobes for about an hour before falling off, which more or less means that in one weekend you’ve been introduced to the twin concepts of unbridled consumerism and buyer’s remorse in one sitting.  Welcome to America, baby.

As you might have gathered, you’ve become significantly more assertive in your loquacity.  You’ve still got opinions on everything — what to watch, what to eat, what to wear — but now it’s insufficient merely to share them anymore; now they must be seriously considered by all parties within earshot.  This isn’t to say you’ve become rude or snotty — you’re not! — you’re just interesting in making sure your two cents’ worth are paid their full due.  (What is it with you and money this month?) In fact, you often punctuate your commentary with the phrase “I promise you” to emphasize its importance, such as “I promise you that Claire’s is cool” or “I promise you that a lollipop is a good dessert if I finish my dinner” or “I promise you that a mammoth’s jawbone will make an excellent guitar,” and so on.

It’s a rare occasion indeed when a conversation is not started by you anymore.  I don’t mind this so much, since you frequently have interesting observations to make, many of which catch me completely off guard.  For example, we went out for a walk the other day to enjoy the nice pre-summertime weather.  Part of the trip included a short uphill hike:

You: You know want to know something?  Walking uphill is tiring.

Me: Yes it is.

You: Well, it’s part of the walk back home.  But you know what they say: you gotta do what you gotta do.

Me: That’s very wise, but who says that?

You: Leela.  On Futurama.

And you know what?  She’s right.

My only gripe is that, despite all the interesting topics upon which you’re prepared to expound, you have exactly one way to introduce them: You want to know something? (or in its phonetic form, You wanna know sumpin’?), as in:

• “You want to know something? If I give you an apple, you should give me a flower,” or
• “You want to know something? If you take off the bottom of the letter Y you get the letter V,” or
• “You want to know something? I’d make an excellent paleontologist,” and so forth.

In fact, you previously used You know what? as you standard salutation.  My dad (your Papa K) hated it when I started conversations with “You know what?” as a kid, and taught me to find alternate ways of starting a conversation; in fulfillment of the prototypical parental prophesy (viz. I’ve become my father) I have been compelled to pass this sense of talkative transgression to you.  Hence, you’ve pioneered an alternative that subscribes, if not to the spirit, at least the letter of my admonition.

It’s not just verbal communication that you’re improving — you’re also working on your written communicative skills as well.  You been working hard on mastering all the letters of the alphabet, and for the most part you’re getting pretty at recognizing them, although some of the less frequent ones still give you trouble.  (I’m looking at you, J and Q.)  Of course, you only recognize the capital versions of the letters, and then only if they’re in a san-serif font.  In fact, any lettering scheme that does not subscribe to this convention you summarily dismiss as “cursive,” along with the invariable post-script “I promise you I’ll learn those next.”

It’s not just recognizing letters, though: you’re mastering writing them as well.  I find this a bittersweet development.  On the one hand, it means that you’re less likely to spend hours writing Gilgameshic epic poems in your distinctive alien scrawl.

On the other hand, it means you can, after a little effort and a comically furled brow, now write your name (and mine and your mom’s (although you spell her’s M-O-M-O, despite my many protestations to the contrary)) in an equally distinct and adorable script:

An you want to know something?  That’s awesome.

I promise you!

– Ba ba

Dear Ladybug,

Just two days after your sister turned twelve months old, you turned forty-nine. (Months, of course.)  That, combined with Easter, my trips to Fort Collins and Spearfish, and the usual end of the semester insanity, has meant that you’re seriously overdue for a newsletter.  Let’s rectify that, then, shall we?

I suppose the biggest event this month, for you at least, is that now you can finally chew gum.  You’d been pestering your mom about it more or less continuously since you sprouted teeth, and eventually you wore her down and she promised that you could chew gum once you turned four.  Of course, you then promptly tricked one of your preschool teachers into giving your some gum right after that and got caught by your mother, at which point she tacked on a further month as punishment, which was a far more traumatic prison sentence to you than anything Spanish Inquisitors could have dreamed up.

Nevertheless, you successfully waited out the clock, and can now be usually found noisily smacking a stick of gum.

Of course, when you’re not chewing gum, you’re talking.  Endlessly.  Ad nauseum.  I know I’ve mentioned your chatterboxery many times before in these new letters, but the combination of your vocabulary and your imagination has meant that your verbosity has increased by order of magnitude.  You talk about your day, about your friends, about my friends, about what’s on television, about princesses, about the planets, about books, about make believe, about… anything, really.  Your like a diminutive version of the Micro Machines Man, and your mother and I get winded simply listening to you talk.  In fact, frequently when you sleep I check your neck for gills, because it seems biologically impossible for you to talk as much as you do in a single lungful of air without first evolving some alternate form of breathing apparatus.

I suspect all this loquaciousness is due in part to your blossoming imagination.  Whereas before you might be content to, say, simply hold on to your dolls or feed them a bottle, now you develop entire back-stories for them, such as just having awoken from a nap, having an allergy to dairy products, and being a secret  princess forced into hiding.  Similarly, once upon a time you were happy to play with your “food toys” by taking plastic pork chops and pretending occasionally to eat them; now you play the roles of maitre de, waitress, cook, and (in some cases) fortunate doctor who just happens to be on the spot to save Daddy from choking on a plastic pork chop.  Indeed, probably only 10% of the time we spend playing with “food toys” actually involves your food toys; most of it consists of arguing about what food is on the menu, and what my bill should be upon the completion of my meal.  You are clearly your mother’s daughter (and your mother’s mother’s granddaughter, come to think of it).

The combination of your endlessly smacking bubble gum and announcing things like “I’m so not liking that” or “I’m totally going to do that” makes it seem like you’re suddenly now fourteen than four.  Indeed, you’ve generally been more sassy of late than I’ve ever really noticed before.  It’s not the rude kind of confrontational attitude kind of sass (at least not yet, thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster), but more a sort of eye-rolling, tongue-clucking, whut-ever kind of parental ennui. As an example, the other night your mom announced that she had a “Girl’s Night” planned with some of her coworkers.

You: Can I go too?

Mom: Well, no.

You: But it’s a girls night, and I’m a girl.  Hel-lllllllooooo!

I find this sort of thing fully as hell right now, mostly because of its novelty.  However, I am getting a bit tired of the eye rolling, and so I’ve co-opted a parenting technique I learned from my mother.  Specifically, whenever you get ready to roll you eyes up into your noggin, I give you a quick flick across the tip of your nose, which snaps your eyes back like a reset button.  Thanks, Nana Schoo!

Your mother, on the other hand, is less amused by this, and she’s decided to purge the iniquity out of you through church.  She’s found a nice Lutheran congregation populated by friends of hers from work and the theater, and she’s doing her best to purify the infidel likes of you and I before the Almighty.  You quite seem to like church, mainly because you get to dress up in matching outfits with your dolls.  However, you also get a kick out of all the singing and standing and sitting that goes on during a typical service, as well as all the arts-and-crafts that goes on during Sunday School… it’s pretty much like preschool all over again, except this time you’re with your parents, and here they let you drink booze (well, wine at least).

Church is still a bit of a theological mystery to you (me too, actually).  Your first exposure to it was on Easter Sunday, and so you’ve spent some time trying to figure out how, exactly, the concepts of God, Jesus, and the Easter Bunny are correlated.  You’ve also been trying to figure out the prayer concept, which (as you attempted to explain to me) did not involve any of the deeper metaphysical aspects, but rather whether or not you’re required to wear a paper sack in order to do it properly.  I went to seminary school for four years, but I have to admit this was a query that had me stumped… until your mother explained that you made a “prayer vest” our of a grocery back and decorated it at Sunday school, and had apparently considered it to be part of the dress requirement for the act.

(Of course, I do my part to instill a healthy appreciation of science on your part as well, and it seems to be sticking.  For example, earlier in the month they cut down a lot of the trees that lined the front of Komplexify U in order to plant new ones.  Upon seeing the devastation for the first time you announced, “Dad!  They cut down the trees… but not all of them.  Only the conifer trees!  The conifers! ,” whereupon your rolled your eyes in horticultural disbelief.)

I love you, little Ladybug! And don’t you roll your eyes at me!

–Ba ba

Dear Ladybug,

You are now officially FOUR YEARS OLD!  There’s so much I could say about how you’re growing up and just what kind of funny, sassy, dramatic kid you’ve become, but maybe it’d be best if I just let you show the world yourself:

I sense someone’s about to become a viral web sensation!

In fact, you turned 4 last Friday on the 19th, but you argued that that could be correct since you hadn’t had your birthday party yet.  I tried the explain the science of the scenario, that on March 19, 2010, you had orbited the sun four full times, and so that was the criterion by which you were judged to be 4. You countered that you had as yet had no birthday cake with 4 candles to blow out and, in the absence of such confirming evidence would continue to remain skeptical, which you expressed in delightful koan fashion as “If one has a birthday without a party, does one really get any older?”

You finally had your party yesterday, with cakes and streamers and screaming girls and pizza and games and giant anthropomorphic rodents, which is to say that we went to Chuck E. Cheese.  You’d been very exacting that you wanted a Princess and the Frog party, although when I pointed out that that would more or less mean that everybody would be dressed like Princess Tiana*, you revised your declaration and opted for simply requiring Princess and the Frog presents instead.

* It’s worth noting, however, that I was required to where a green shirt to the party, on the grounds that I was the frog.

As has also been the tradition, your Chuck E. Cheese party was actually the second time we celebrated your birthday this month.  This first time — your actual birth date itself — we had a family affair at the Coco Palace.  The Coco Palace is a Thai/Japanese/Chinese restaurant that serves Asian dishes whose deliciousness is exceed only by their price.  Seriously, most dishes cost an arm and a leg, and some even require a kidney or two.   I’m quite pleased that your culinary palette extends far beyond the typical  “macaroni and cheese or chicken fingers” of most four-year-olds; I just wish it didn’t extend into the sphere of  “dad will pay off dinner in debtor’s prison.”

Last month your excitement had been focused almost exclusively on news of your little sister, but as the magic March 19 date loomed closer and closer, you’ve grown exponentially more excited about turning four.  This seems in part a confusion on your part between the terms “older-bigger-larger” which admittedly are strongly correlated and, when taken in sequential pairs are more or less synonyms.*  For example, you’d momentarily convinced yourself that at 4 you could stop using a car seat, reasoning this as

1. You can quit using the car seat when you get heavier.
2. “Heavier” means “bigger”
3. “Bigger” means “older”
4. 4 is older than 3, so you have become older
5. Therefore you have become heavier, so
6. You can get out of the car seat.

and though I was moved by syllogistic manner of your presentation, you’re still banished to the car seat.

* At swim practice the other day you noted that the lockers in the dressing room came in two varieties: those that were very tall, and those that were half the size.  Consequently, you asked that I place your clothes in the younger locker, since you were the younger of us.

In fact, you’ve spent a lot of time crafting arguments of the form

1. I want  X, but you said I can have it only if I’m Y-ier
2. I’m 4.
3. Therefore I’m Y-ier than I was at 3.
4. Gimme X.

I might point out that Proposition (3) is somewhat fallacious, but I do appreciate that you’re at least trying to frame your requests for ponies, bubble gum, candy, and Barbie Dreamhouses as logical arguments rather than temper tantrums, so kudos.

This fascination with logic and reason (or at least the superficial trappings of it) in part seems connected to your increased interest in science.  Right now you can recite the order of the planets, the colors of the color spectrum, and even the four principle elements that make up living things (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, FYI), although I have to admit that at first you were confused about the latter bit, at one point asking if “elements were those things we hung on the Christmas tree?”  Astronomy in particular fascinates you, and you ask me all sorts of questions about Jupiter and Saturn and Mars and especially about whether or not the little robot there has gotten unstuck from the sand yet.  (Last I checked, no.)  Your interest is such that you’ve actually (a) checked out astronomy DVDs from the library and (b) demanded that I take you to an astronomy movie showing at the Journey Museum in town.  If there was ever any doubt that you would grow up to be a nerd… well… it’s all gone now.

You’ve also seemed to be much more excited about music lately.  Actually, that’s not true: you’re as excited about music now as you’ve always been.  Rather, what’s changed is the number of songs that you’ve committed to memory, which rivals most iPods.  You’re a big fan of Top 40s tunes (as evidenced from the YouTube bit above), songs from Glee (as also so evidenced), They Might Be Giants, seventies funk, you name it. In fact, you do more than sing: you perform!  You bob your head to the beat if it’s mellow and thrash your head to it if it rocks; you pirouette and spin on your tip-toes if it’s delicate, or pop-and-lock if it’s thumpin’.  Your mother has already filled out your application for American Idol’s Season 21 and So You Think You Can Dance’s Season 17, so you’re kinda booked in 2022, FYI.

So let’s recap:  You’re 4, fond of stating science facts and information about planets, plus you you sing and dance and groove incessantly, hollering at the top of your lungs in the car or at home or at school or wherever else the urge compels you.  Either you have some form of lyrical Tourette’s syndrome, or you’re poised to be the Buckaroo Bonzai for a new generation! Awesome!  (Papa K would be proud!)

Happy birthday, Ladybug!  You’re just awesome!

– Ba ba

Dear Ladybug,

This week you turned forty-seven months old.  While you’re still a month away from becoming the Big Four, that doesn’t much seem to matter anymore, as this month you became a Big Sister, which to you is infinitely better.

You’ve been excited about being a big sister for some time now, which has been a little stressful at times since your mom and I were trying to keep the adoption relatively quiet.  You are terribly excited about being able to hold her close to you.  You can’t wait to hug her and kiss her.  You are brimming with excitement about feeding her milk from a bottle.  You are, however, entirely uninterested in changing her diapers, my claims to its importance notwithstanding.

As a result, you were positively thrilled when the first packet of information about your baby sister arrived in late January.  You brushed past the pages of medical forms (pausing only to note that some of them were in Chinese, which you found oddly surprising) to see the three pictures of the Butterfly.  “Oh!,” you squealed, “She’s cute!”  Moments later you disappeared in your room, emerging seconds later with ladybug backpack crammed with shirts, socks, and snacks and announcing you were ready to go get her.

It’s going to be a loooooonnnnnnnng four-to-eight months.

Eventually we convinced you that (a) we wouldn’t need to pack for China for several months and (b) when we eventually did, you would be better served by packing pants and underwear rather than trail mix and craisins.   Nevertheless, you remain excited about the prospect of finally, officially becoming a big sister.

It’s already become the new chronological benchmark for you, replacing your previous measure via units of annual age.  To wit, nowadays you preface statements such as “When I am a big sister, then I can sit in the front seat,” or “When I am a big sister, I can chew gum,” or “When I am a big sister, I will rule the world with my minion, muwah ha ha haaa!”  I may be exaggerating a little bit.

Of course, I’ve also been trying to explain the logical consequences of the  “When I am a big sister” antecedent to you, namely, When you are a big sister, you will not longer be the only child in the family.”  The concept of no longer being the daughter, as opposed to being a daughter, has troubled you of late.  I suppose this is true of all first siblings, but I’ve been particularly impressed by the way you’re handling it: not with quiet grace and acceptance, but neither with tantrums and tears.  Instead, as is often your way, you’ve approached this not as a problem, but as the starting point for negotiations:

You: So Dad, how about this?

Me: I’m listening.

You: How about I be your daughter, and the Butterfly by my little sister?

Me: Well, that is how it’s going to work.  But the Butterfly will also be my daughter, too.

You: No, no, that’s not what I mean.  I mean how about I be your daughter, and the Butterfly by my little sister, and that’s all.

Me: Well, if the Butterfly is your sister, then she has to be someone’s daughter, right.

You: Okay, okay.  How ’bout I be your daughter, and the Butterfly be mommy’s daughter, and she be my little sister.

Me: But then you wouldn’t be mommy’s daughter anymore, right?

You: Oh, yeah…  Maybe we could take turns.

Me: Sometimes your my daughter, and sometimes your mommy’s daughter?

You: Yes.  I think that would work.

Me: But that means sometimes you won’t be my daughter, but the Butterfly will instead.

You: Oh, yeah… Okay, okay, here’s my final offer: I be your daughter and mommy’s daughter, and the Butterfly be’s my daughter.

Me: The Butterfly will be your daughter and your sister?

You: Yes.  How about that?

Me: I think that’s illegal outside of Arkansas.

You: What?

Me: I’ll explain it to you later.

You: How about when I’m 6?*

Me: How about when you’re 16?  In any case, the answer is still “No.”

You: You drive a hard bargain.

…And then you’ll go off to your room and furiously begin scribbling out master plans and complicated calculations in the attempt to find that perfect combination of attributes that will allow you be the an only child and, simultaneously, and older sister.  I’m not exactly sure what progress you’ve made, since most of your calculations take the following  form:

However, if volume of calculations is any indication of progress, I expect you’ll have a publishable result any day now.

* Unrelated to issues of the Butterfly, you’ve taken to asking questions that require explanations of increasing complexity or maturity to understand.  When such questions arose, I would usually preface my response with “Well, that’s a little difficult to explain,” before launching into a (usually incomprehensible to you) answer.  However, lately when I make such a proclamation, you’ve been responding with “Why don’t you tell me when I’m older,” and then specifying a particular age at which you’d like to be informed.  For example, as noted above, you’ve requested to be informed of the inbreeding stereotypes of the Deep South when you’re six.

As a second example, the other night we were watching the kid-friendly time-traveling movie Meet the Robinsons.  Near the end of the movie, the protagonist Lewis and the antagonist Goob fly through a disruption in the film’s time-line, and watch the effects of one potential future (a grim industrial one) change into another potential future (a retro-utopian one) through a cascade of bubbles.  “Dad,” you asked, “what’s happening to the city?”  “That’s a little hard to explain,” I replied, and mentally began the process of distilling the A- and B-theories of time at a level appropriate to a 3-year-old pretend princess. “Why don’t you tell me when I’m older.  When I’m 5, I think.”

So there you go: my current docket for back-logged explanations

• Temporal causality and paradox — age 5
• Southern stereotypes — age 6

So, yes, you’re full of love this month.  I guess that’s particularly timely, what with this month also including Valentine’s Day, which you celebrated by passing out (and thereby collecting) cards and candies at preschool.  This year you opted to give out Phineas and Ferb valentine cards and heart-shaped lollipops, which was fine.  You also wanted to give each valentine your own personal touch, which meant signing your name by yourself and affixing heart-shaped stickers on each card of various sizes indicating the relative degree to which you liked the person to whom the card would be given.  The upshot of this is that it took me about ten seconds to properly label attach a lollipop to each of the 24 valentines we needed to make; it took you the better part of a hour to sign your name and stickerly bedazzle each one afterward.

I should have paid particular attention to the size of the heart you stuck on “Alex”’s card, because the day after Valentine’s Day you announced that Alex was your new boyfriend, and that you loved him.   When I asked why Alex was your boyfriend, you replied “Because he said he loves me.”  Then you danced up into the clouds on a sea of hearts and rainbows that unexpectedly burst forth from your head.

On the one hand, I was relieved to hear that bad-boy Jevon was out of the picture (literally, apparently — he was bad enough to be removed from daycare); on the other hand, I’m still not ready to deal with this particular brand of drama.  As a result, I laid down the following edict:

Me: You’re not allowed to love any boys.

You: But Dad, I love you, and you’re a boy.

Me: Good point.  Okay, you’re only allowed to love one boy.

You: Oh daddy, sometimes one boy is not enough.  Sometimes you just have to love two boys.

Me: And why is that?

You: Oh, it’s a little hard to explain.

Okay, kiddo.  Why don’t you explain it to me when I’m older, like when I’m 40.

In the mean time, I love you!

–Ba ba

PS. NO BOYFRIENDS!

Dear Ladybug,

Last week you turned forty-six months old, just two months shy of becoming a four-year-old.

Once upon a time you were busily counting down the hours until you turned four, largely because your mother promised you that you could start chewing gum at that magic age.  However, nowadays you would probably hardly notice, as you spend every waking moment playing Super Mario Kart.  We got one of those Wii systems for Christmas (thanks, Nana and Papa Shoo!), and given its simple play mechanic, viz. steer the steering wheel, it’s one of the few games you understand well enough to play.

This isn’t to say you play it well, however.  In fact, you like to race on specific courses to purposefully drive silly.  One of your favorite courses is something called Shy Guy Beach, not because you find the sandy racetrack particularly engaging, but rather because you can drive (and subsequently sink) your car into the drink over and over and over again, each time to have your onscreen avatar fetched from Davy Jone’s locker by a floating turtle with a fishing rod.  Another course favorite is Delfino Beach, which features a sort of European-themed neighborhood through which you like to drive at a meandering pace, repeatedly bumping into the doorways and shouting at the screen “Nana… are you in there?”

We also have a Toy Story game that features a lot of carnival-themed mini-games, several of which are shooters.  You’ve become adept at removing the game remote from its plastic sleeve and sliding it into the pistol attachment, and have turned into something of a crack shot.  Part of me is concerned about your growing fascination with video games, partly because I’d rather you not get addicted to them so young (or indeed, at all), but mostly because your two video-game fascinations — shooting guns and manic racing — suggest a burgeoning interest on your part in organized crime.

On a tangentially related note, I’ve been dreading writing this particular newsletter, not because of any particular unpleasantness I need to report with regards to your growth, but rather because you’ve so much growing in the past two months… and I never got around to writing your month 45 letter.  I fear now that when you eventually grow up to be some maladjusted emo teen* destined for a life of crime, it will all be traced back to when you were a toddler and I forgot to write you a digital letter about the time you got that rash.

* Right now, however, you’re developing not into a emo kid, but a valley girl.  In addition to a wide array of scoffing noises and eye rolls, you’ve become addicted to the word “so,” as in “I am so going to see Princess and the Frog” or “I’m am so not interested in eating that.”  Couple that with your similar affection for the phrase “Oh.  My.  Gosh.” and talking to you is like having a Turing Test with a sentient copy of Desperately Seeking Susan.**

** Thankfully, you haven’t yet discovered the audio-filler of “like” (as in, “I’m like going to like go to the like mall, okay?”), although you have coined a variation of it: or like that.  You often tack in on to the end of requests so as to soften its blow, as in “Maybe we can go see a movie, or like that?” or “Can I wear my sparkly shoes, or like that?”  Your lexicography never fails to amuse me.

In point of fact I did not forget about to write your newsletter.  Rather, it coincided with finals week, and by the time I was done grading those it was suddenly Christmas and then it was 2010 and then… well, you get the picture.  Nevertheless, Month 45 does merit some mention as the month of The Rash.

It started at the the day before Thanksgiving, with a couple of raised bumps of reddish skin on your back.  We put a little lotion on them on the assumption of irritated dry skin, but within an hour they spread all over your back, then to your neck and back of your ears, and then down your arms and legs.  It took another hour after that to get you into an emergency visit to urgent care, at which point you’d swelled up like Miss Stay-Puft.  The doctor there looked you over for all of thirty seconds before rendering his differential diagnosis: “She’s got hives.  Here’s a prescription for some antihistamines.”  Noting that I was significantly unmoved by his lightning fast MD reflexes, he added “She looks a lot worse that she feels,” which struck me as a odd attempt to comfort — it was obvious you felt better than you looked, since I think it was physically impossible for you to look worse: by the evening your entire body was covered with swollen red and purple blemishes, giving you the impression of someone who had, say, lost a fight with a belt sander whilst in a burning house.  However, to the doctor’s credit, though it itched a little, you hardly seemed to notice, and after a solid dose of medicine, your rash disappeared completely within another day.

And so it was through the first week of December, when one evening I noticed a little splotch on the back of your arm.  Within a hour you’d swollen up like a fuchsia Hulk again.  This time, however, the swelling went to your ears and eyelids too, which made you look like you’d survived eight rounds with Evander Holyfield… but just barely.  Once again we went back to the doctor, who looked you over for all of fifteen seconds before declaring “Hives.”  She then looked at your chart and added, not particularly helpfully, “It looks like she might be allergic to the medicine we gave her last time for the hives.  Huh.”  She then prescribed a different antihistamine and suggested an “oatmeal bath” to help with the itching.  You found this latter concept particularly amusing for two reasons.  First, you associate oatmeal with breakfast foods, so in effect, the doctor was ordering you to get into a ginormous bowl of warm cereal; that is, you were given a doctor’s note specifically authorizing you to play with your food.  Second, when you finally extricated yourself from the oatmeal, you were covered with the slimy remnants of the oatmeal power that had congealed on you, so that in effect you emerged from the bath dirtier than when you went in.  “That’s silly,” was your assessment, and I agree wholeheartedly.

Fortunately for all concerned, the antihistamines beat the rash away in a day without any adverse effects, so by the end of Month 35 the only thing you were worrying about was Christmas.

You made out pretty good this year.  Including the aforementioned Wii, you got a heap of princess gowns (including a Dorothy Gale costume, who while not a princess exactly, is at least lousy with rubies).  Among them was a Snow White gown, whose existence as a Christmas present was more or less a given, as you had requested it as a gift from me, your mother, your grandmothers, your aunt, your cousin, and, of course, Santa Claus.  On no less than 3 occasions, too.  Consequently, in the weeks immediately following Christmas through the New Year you spent in a constant state of fashion flux, changing from one gown to another to another over the course several minutes, as if you were less a flesh-and-blood child than a quantum superposition of princesses.

Of course, even you can get a little tired of pretending to be 2D royalty, and in Month 46 you’ve decided to try your hand again at several activities I thought you’d given up on.  For example, you’ve taken it upon yourself to help me shovel snow, and to assist you got your very own red snow shovel.  You understand the basic premise — namely, to move snow out of the way to form a walking path — but have yet to connect this concept with the existence of sidewalks and driveways under the snow, so if left to your own devises you end up scooping an exotic Brownian motion across my yard.

You’ve also decided to give sledding another try.  I’d pretty much broken you of the habit when you just turned two, when we went out for our first sledding expedition, wherein you sat in your blue and I pulled you around the park on the snow.  That was all fun and games until I took a turn too quickly and flung you out of the sled, although on a positive note you learn (quite unexpectedly) how to make a snow angle at velocity.  This time out, however, we started by sledding down some gentle slopes together, and you quickly discovered the twin joys of thrilling speed of zipping down the hill, and not having to pull the sled yourself on the trudge back up it.  By the second day you were sledding by yourself; by Day 3 we’d built a small snow ramp so you could get some air; and by Day 4 I made you pull the damn sled yourself.  Perhaps not coindentially, there was no Day 5.

Speaking of sports, bowling is also experiencing a resurrection.  The last time you bowled was also the last time you sledded, and back then your teeny tiny muscles imparted so little force to the ball that the only reason it moved at all was plate tectonics.  This time, however, you had both moxie and machinery on your side: not only did the bowling alley have lane “bumpers” to keep the ball from falling in the gutter, but they also had “bowling ramps,” a little metal stand that resembled the first drop of a roller-coaster in miniature.  When your turn to bowl came up, you would carefully slide the ramp to the end of the lane, squat, and through one squinting eye gently aim the ramp at the center pin in a comically intense display of meticulous precision.  Then you’d fetch your ball and, in the process of trying to lift it up to the ramp, would knock it all akimbo, so that when you finally pushed the ball down to play, it was rarely aimed at the correct pin or, in some cases, even the correct lane.  Nevertheless, you had a blast, shouting Adios! to the pins every time you’d send the ball on its way to mete out their destruction, and inventing elaborate celebratory dances whenever any of them fell.

And while it’s not nearly as ESPN-worthy of the previous two items of discussion, you’ve also decided to work on improving your pronunciation skills in general, and on the phoneme [L] in particular.  Your whole life you’ve pronounced it as a [W], which given your name can be a source of endless irritation to you.  You’ve learned that the sound requires your tongue to be against the uppoer part of your mouth, but as yet haven’t quite figured out that pheonetic sweet spot’s location, and so your tongue wanders around the front top teeth in what resembles a slow-motion replay of a failed attempt to blow a raspberry.

You’ve also taken to some new activities.  One of your current favorites is the writing of stories and letters to people you know.  You grab a sheet of paper and a convenient pen, and begin recording your elaborate plot-lines and character development or thorough retelling of personal anecdotes in a frantic cursive script.  Well, not English cursive, mind you, nor any other human cursive with which I am familiar, but cursive nonetheless:

Of course, the fact that the characters don’t mean anything — or your inability to read them even if they did — does not deter you from writing them endlessly; moreover, your amazing memory allows you to recall what you’ve written for days after the fact.  In fact, your mom and I are so enamored with this burst of literary creativity (given your flair for story-telling, you mom thinks you have a career ahead of you in literature; given your mastery of arcane and indecipherable symbols, I think you’ve got a future in mathematics) that we’ve bought you a spiral binder to jot your thoughts in — which you promptly filled up within days.

You are amazing, little girl.  I’d give you a big hug and kiss to show you, except that you’re too busy holding up a store on Mario Kart to notice.  Love ya, kid.

–Ba ba