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There’s a theory that shark bites are caused, not by the desire of sharks to eat delicious human, but rather by sharks’ combination of an inquisitive nature and a lack of hands or facsimilies thereof. The theory goes that the reason so many shark bites involve the shark biting a chunk out of a swimmer and then trundling off into the distance is that the shark has only one part of their body, the mouth, which can has the sensitivity and control to find out what something is.

Watching the emergence of Investigating Finger puts my strongly in mind of this theory.

Rosa has hit a point in her development that I’d semi-forgotten from Ada’s: Investigating Finger Investigates. Suddenly she’s gained enough control over her hands and her index finger to be able to carefully and deliberately poke at and manipulate, well, everything. Peering intently, a little crooked finger will work over any intriguing object untl it’s been investigated to her satisfaction.

The interesting thing is that this has correlated with a sudden drop in the urge to cram everything into her mouth: hence, I conclude that like sharks, urge to taste the world is driven as much by the mouth being the only part of the body thet have much control over

Amazing. Ho did I get so lucky as to have such a wonderful kid?

Ada, Lias, et moi sommes allez à «Southwards Car Museum». Les enfants ont fscine par la voiture de le ganster, la grande Rolls Royce, et la Cadillac de Marlenne Dietrich. Ada a pensé cést unjust que le chauffer s’asseoit dans un petit place, mais les passages s’asseoissent dans le grands places.

Dimanche Rosa a rit pout la première fois, parce que sa soeur a sauté dans un grand morceaux de embellage de bulles. La deuxième fois, lundi, ella a rit parce que sa soeur a éclaté beaucoup de bulles.

“I’ll dial in when I get home from work.”

My first encounter with a modem was an old acoustic coupler my Dad would bring home in the early 80s as part of a briefcase-sized, wood-enclosed apparatus containing the modem and a terminal.

Cutting edge; while I got a modem of my own in the early 90s, I didn’t really ever dial into a workplace (although I supported journos who did); I leapt straight to VPNs over cable modems instead. But I still talk about dialing in, but there’s an ever-decreasing number of people who have any experience of it; soon, like trying to explain using acoustic tapes to save and load programs on my first computer, people will most likely think I’m trying to pull their leg.

“Time to wind up your window, honey.”

The first car I owned had winder-operated windows; my daughter sat in it to have a play before it was taken away to a scrap merchant after a shithead council worker dropped a tree on the rear window and c-pillar; it was a car I loved dearly (and, it must be said, irrationally, since there’s nothing inherintly special about a mid-80s Corolla).

That play will most likely be her only experience with manually-cranked windows, one of us starts buying vintage cars or veers into the world of ultra-light specialised sports/road hybrids like the Porsche 911RS3. Winding the window is, I guess, technically what happens, but the winding is at the behest of the button.

There has been a certain amount of “when the hell did that happen?” in the last couple of months because, well, today Ada turned four. One of those paradoxes of major life changes; I have been a father forever, and yet it only happened yesterday, and when the hell did she gain four years?

It’s been a rolling two days of celebration; yesterday was her party day. On her third birthday Ada wanted more adult friends than children; this time around she invited 15 kids and only a small body of adults; they were scattered across friends from creche, soccer, Junglerama, Alliance Francaise, as well as children she’s know via our friends. Last year she enjoyed a ride on the Eastbourne Ferry for a play in Days Bay and lunch in a cafe; this year we booked a party at the Wellington Museum of City and Sea.

It turned out to be a fantastic venue. They laid on a room with face-painting, colouring-in, a guided tour of the museum with things they thought would appeal to the kids (including their mock-holographic movie with Maori creation myths), a visit from a giant costume dog (patterned after Paddy the Wanderer, a then well-known character on the waterfront in the inter-war years. Lunch was via Wholly Bagels, and there were little gift packs for the kids to take away. As far as I can tell the kids loved it, finishing up with them roaring around their big room with balloons in a race/balloon fight they worked out amongst themselves.

(Ada was going to wear her party clothes, but instead opted to wear her football uniform, having come straight from the game.)

All in all it was a fantastic day, with Ada coming home zonked out and spending most of the afternoon resting on the sofa and watching Microcosmos after explaining gently “I would like some time on my own.”

Today was to be much quieter; we both took the day off work. Morning was the unveiling of The New Bed. Or rather, the bits for the New Bed; originally we’d bought the standard single version of the Treehouse kit bed from Inhabit Design with an eye to building it up with the ladder and wendy house; this year was when we did that. Ada knew it was coming, but the whole business was deeply exciting for her. I managed to knock the extra kit bits on before breakfast, and then after we began to re-organise the room.

Disaster struck.

I had climbed on newly heightened bed to re-organise some things on the wall when I found myself standing on the floor amidst the ruins of the support struts that hold the slats in place, with a small girl having hysterics to one side at her broken birthday bed.

Pretty reasonable reaction if you ask me.

This was... unexpected. And not good. Definitely not good. For one thing, a broken birthday present at 9:30 is not what you’re after. Nor is the loss of the bed your daughter sleeps in. Not, come to that, is the thought that while, yes, I am quite large, I’m only as big as three or four hefty kids and shouldn’t it stand up to that?

Inspection showed the slat supports had come away, staples ripped out. At this point neither of us was feeling full of good-will. Inhabit, however, did a lot to change this; when they found out what happened, they mentioned that the Production Manager for the factory happened to be in the store, and he’d be happy to come up to the house and see what he could do. By 10 am John was inspecting it, had come to the conclusion it was a straightfoward fix, and offered to come back after a planned visit to a family member. At 12 he re-appeared, fixing the slat supports back to the bed with screws which, he made it clear, were the things that should have been used at the factory in the first place. He speculated that someone had stapled and then forgot to finish the job properly; that speculation was delivered with the air of a man who would be Having Words with someone, possibly several someones, about the Right Way To Do Things when he got back to the factory.

So, on the one hand: boo for the three-year old manufacturing defect. Yay for the incredibly quick setting right that saved Ada’s birthday.

I’ve been running through some of the Calvin and Hobbes collection; I was struck that we seem to have lucked into a kid who seems to have Calvin’s wild imagination, oddball sense of humour, without the bratiness or ADD. I’ve spent a lot of time re-reading C&H and giggling inanely.

LL918 with spares!

About a year ago I dug out my old Lego for Ada to play with; since then she’s aquired quite a bit of her own. One of the things I’ve taken care to do is to stash the instructions, because it’s been a bit sad for me that I haven’t been able to put together some of my old sets, like my Lego Space stuff, having long since lost all of mine.

Until a few weeks ago, when I stumbled upon this giant collection of old manuals, including such gems as my 30-plus year old Space Transport, Rocket Base, and various other sets.

Of course, after 30-odd years, moving from New Zealand to Scotland to New Zealand again, there are some bits and pieces missing. And this is where Lego are o for oarsum. With the part numbers in the Peeron set inventory, I was able to order replacement parts from the Lego website; after quiet for a couple of weeks, I came home on Friday and found a small package containing the parts. Well done, Lego!

Je fauchée ma clavicule à judo la semaine denier; mon médecin mourait. Il n’est pas mauvais, ma fille gagner un prix por joueuse la jour á le foot!

One of discoveries Sunday’s first excursion into the wonderful world of kiddy football was unexpected side effect of having spent three or so years working on concepts of playing nice (sharing, taking turns and so on), which is the furious, pitiable wailing that accompanies the discovery that in competitive sport you have to take your turn, not wait for it.

Much howling, a mix of self-pitying and righteous indignation, ensued. This is, the coach/referee assured me, entirely normal with three years olds, and I guess it would be. But still: an unexpected side effect; it encourages me in the belief, though, that the whole business is a good thing, not least because while “playing nice with others” is a life skill that’s valuable, so is “I’ll go get it myself, no-one’s going to give it to me.”

Other than that, and a plaintitave “I’m too cold, I want to go home”, swiftly fixed by another layer of jacketing, we had a ball, and Ada managed an absolute gem of a perfectly-executed tackle, timing a textbook interception of another player on his run into her goal.

After the game Ada worked on her dribbling some more, controlling the ball through 90 and 180 degree turns, and frustrating her mother’s attempts to regain control of the ball. I’m looking forward to see how she’ll handle next week.