CleverBlogName

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.

To elaborate on my earlier comments: when a movie starts with a montage of one character’s life which runs through a lost pregnancy (or possibly news of infertility, it’s hard to tell), a lifelong regret at not having fulfilled a dream, the death of one of the principal character’s wife and then plunges into him going to court and being committed to elderly care with the resultant loss of his home, I find myself thinking a number of things; high amongst them are “No wonder Ada wanted to re-watch this with me so she could ask questions about what’s going on after seeing it at her creche’s movie day”, and “What the hell? Did her creche really think this was a great movie for three year olds?”

(And yes, I know a three year old is probably missing/glossing over a bunch of stuff in Up that I might find disturbing or distressing; the fact she wanted to re-watch it with me so she could ask questions rather suggested she noticed something was up, though.)

I can also add that when there’s the scene where Fredrickson sets the chairs back in the house, the most poignant question you can be asked is, “Daddy, why is he putting the chairs back up and sitting in them?”, because getting “Because he misses his wife” out is something of a challenge at that point.

Is it a good movie? Absolutely. But definitely one that may require a bunch of talking through with a small.

(On the other hand it’s less disturbing than Ice Age, which Ada doesn’t, unlike Ice Age 2, want to watch again.)

Last night I was taking my brother-in-law and niece home from my sister-in-law’s wedding; there was a spirited disagreement between cousin, and the adults about whose house was closer to the wedding venue; when all other arguments failed, the trump card for the five year old was:

Mummy says our house is closest and Mummy is younger than you and old people lose their memory and forget things so I’m right.

The wedding was a great afternoon, and Ada was a complete darling as a flower girl, alongside her cousin; they led their aunt down the aisle perfectly. She capered about during the vows, earning her the kind of stern finger-wagging only a five year old can give a younger relative; her response was to hold the finger and dance about some more, fortunately without whacking the bride or bridesmaids.

The Wellington Aero Club had an open day on Saturday. For a little girl who spent happy hours poking around racing cars in Te Papa a few months ago who likes to go to the airport to watch the planes, and her daddy, this seems pretty much like a heaven-sent afternoon, and that’s how it turned out.

As well as the pictured cockpit sessions in the pictured CT-4E and CJ6 Nanchang, Ada got chances to hop into the pilot’s seat of a Sounds Air Cessna Caravan, although we missed out on the Trojan when the owner needed a bio break.

While I attempted to explain the Trojan and Corsair’s features for aircraft carriers—the Corsair had it’s wings up—I don’t think Ada really grasped the idea of planes that land and take off boats.

The only real disappointments of the day were the tiny two-seat plane, whose owners shut up shop just as we arrived to have a look (I suspect Ada may have been so wedded to it because it looked, well, child-sized), and missing out on a chance to go up for a flight in the Catalina, which had run out of seat allocations by the time I asked. She was, however, a little trooper about it; she was really upset, but avoided any kind of tantrum. I need to make it up to her with a trip on a plane when I can afford it.

One not-so-minor irk, though: a few women earlier in the day had heard my plan and suggested that the whole business was about Daddy using Ada as an excuse to do something. Yes, yes, I know it’s a standard cultural trope that men only do things with their kids to have an excuse to buy things for themselves, and that little girls can’t possibly be interested in aircraft. It’s a bullshit sexist trope, too.

Ada with her OLPC

So, I didn’t get to writing anything for Lovelace day proper. This is probably because I was busy writing about Jean Reno for French class (il est pas rasé). Homework first, people. Although I guess if I was less stupified by poor sleep this week I would have thought to write about a famous woman and combined my homework with an educational exercise re: Lovelace day.

So, I don’t have that. I do, however, have this; a picture of Ada playing with her loaner OLPC, which provides her with many hours of entertainment and budding computer literacy.

Ada: “I am going to make this a chicken sandwich. Chicken is going in the sandwich. He is in my big car.”

Rodger: “Does chicken want to be eaten?”

Ada: “Nooooo.”

Rodger: “Then perhaps chicken shouldn’t go in the sandwich.”

Ada: “Chicken has to go in the sandwich, because it’s a chicken sandwich.”

Ada then stuffs the toy chicken—the same toy chicken, I note that went to hospital with her when she was seriously ill at 7 months—into the cushions making up the sandwich, ordering him to “push your head in!”, throws a towel over it so the sandwich will cook, and then announces:

“Chicken is making a terrible fuss!”

Rodger: “Is that because chicken doesn’t want to be eaten?”

Ada: “Yes. Now you must eat the chicken sandwich.”

Fortunately I had already been designated a triceratops, so no chicken for me.

I’m far too sentimental to have given her any of this cooking and eating my toys. I blame her mother.

Oystercatcher off Miramar

I was pretty pleased with this one; we went up to give Ada a promised-but-missed trip up to the Massey Memorial. On the way back to the car I managed to get an action shot of an Oystercatcher. Getting a moderately in-focus shot of a bird in flight has been a holy grail of mine for quite some time.

“Daddy, when you shave you look like a woman. When mans shave, they look like women.”

I guess I’ve been wearing stubble and short beards more than I realised lately.

Ada also undertook a first today; we carefully counted out sixteen dollars of fifty cent pieces from Pig[1], put them in a drawstring bag, carried them into town. From there Ada went into Unity Books and chose “The Nickle-Nackle Tree” as the very first book she bought with her own money, after first considering a number of other possibilities.

She wants to commemorate this by putting her name on the receipt and keeping it somewhere safe.

[1] Pig is, these days, generally stuffed with small change rather than delicious pretend lemon.

Today was the last (formal) day of linuxconf 2010, and since I was a “professional” delegate I went to the dinner, and took Maire and Ada along, too. It was a pretty decent night out, with a kapa haka group, a chance to catch up with gnat after way too many years, sitting with Tridge at our table (do coding skills, like celebrity, osmose through proximity? If so, I should be able to do the best work of my life after bathing in his aura), and having Liz give Ada a ride in her wheelchair (which was the coolest thing of the evening, I reckon).

Ada was magnificent. We left early, but still didn’t get home until 10, which is two and a half hours past Ada’s usual bedtime, and she was brilliant. She drew, she ran around Civic Square, she chatted to people, she sat in the lobby of the Town Hall with me and scrutinised the geometry of the tiles that made up the floor (“Un, deux, trois, quatre triangles in the square!”), and at quarter to ten she explained she wanted to go to bed, all with nary a grumpy moment for the evening. I feel so lucky with her.