21
Apr
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Emilia has decided that she does not like the hollow chocolate bunny that was left for her by the Easter Bunny. “It doesn’t have an inside,” she informs us. “That’s wrong.”
“Why is that wrong?’
“Because everything has an inside. This bunny just has an outside. Also, it smells like peanut butter.”
“So, you don’t want it?”
“No.”
“Can I have it?”
“No.”
“But if you don’t want it…”
“I’m giving it to Candy. Candy doesn’t care if something has an inside.”
Meet Candy:
Featuring racing scooters adorned with transgressive plastic purses- shut up, plastic purses are always trangressive when carried by cowgirls on racing scooters - and starring Toady as a Hankshawnian thumb.
*****
Elsewhere: the Easter Bunny confronts...
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23
Mar
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
You know that it’s going to be a long day when your four year old gets out of bed with giant wads of purple bubble gum stuck in her hair.
“How did you get gum in your hair? Did you get out of bed last night and get some gum?”
“No. The Gum Fairy put it there.”
“You know that gum isn’t for chewing at bedtime.”
“The Gum Fairy doesn’t know that. She thinks gum is for anytime.”
She went on to explain that this is a longstanding disagreement between the Gum Fairy and the Tooth Fairy, who does not approve of gum on pillows. The Easter Bunny, as might be expected, is agnostic on this issue, as it does not involve chocolate. (The Easter Bunny, we also learned during this discussion, is part kangaroo. “That’s how he can stand up on two legs and carry his basket. Regular bunnies can’t do that.”) One learns much when one asks the question: how did you get gum in your hair?
11
Mar
Emilia wants to know what happens when we die. She asks a few times a week, on average, sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on whether or not we’ve spoken about my dad or about Tanner or about dinosaurs. Today, she asked because they’d been talking about the Easter story at school. She wanted to know why Jesus got to fly up into the sky, and Grandpa didn’t.
You burned him, didn’t you? she asks. How could he fly after that?
Explaining death is one thing. Explaining the cremation, the afterlife and Divine resurrection are something else entirely.
16
Feb
Emilia loves Hannah Montana. She’s not entirely sure who Hannah Montana is – she’s never seen the show or heard the music – but she knows that some of the older girls at school like her and that the boys don’t like her and that she has something to do with music and dancing and that’s good enough for her. She’s been composing odes to Hannah Montana, because she worries that Hannah might feel bad that boys don’t like her, which of course means that there would be far fewer people for Hannah to play with, hence the feeling bad, etc. It’s complicated.
11
Feb
Emilia: "Mommy, I want to change my name."
Me: "Oh?"
Emilia: "I want you to call me Hannah Montana Smarty Candygirl."
Me: "Hannah Montana...
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25
Jan
Text of e-mail: “What you can’t see is the epic turd. I spared you that. So the four year old sits on the John and reads Vanity Fair while dropping bombs.”
This is what happens when I leave the house for the day. Everybody gets all up in the body art and then someone takes a massive crap – while, apparently, reading Vanity Fair, which, thank god she’s picking up the important life skills early – and then someone e-mails me the evidence.
21
Jan
When I saw the news that Anna Kournikova’s mom had been charged with neglect for leaving her little boy home alone for an hour while she ran errands, I thought, how terrible. And then I thought, there but for the grace of a little more restraint go I.
I’ve left my daughter alone. Not for an hour – not for anywhere near an hour; more like a handful of minutes – and not at any significant distance, but still. How much difference does time and distance make, anyway? If you live in a big house, with a big yard, does leaving a child napping while you go outside to garden count as neglect? Running next door to borrow sugar from a neighbor? Crossing the street to return a snow shovel? Is it okay if you’re only gone a few minutes? If you haven’t gone too far away? Should you never, ever leave your children alone in the house, for any amount of time? Or does keeping your children at your side even while you’re dragging the recycling bins back to the garage mark you as an incurably hyper parent?
19
Jan
This is what passes for humor in our house. You'll be forgiven if you get confused and think you've stumbled onto rehearsals for a kindergarten performance of scenes from the works of Ionesco.
Yeah. I...
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