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Today in kiddie French we read Animal Farm for three year olds.

No, really.

The book was the story of le canard; le canard worked around the farm while the fat farmer lay in bed eating chocolates; le canard worked until he cried with exhaustion, at which point the other animals—la vache, les muttons, and a gaggle of others—stormed the house, threw the farmer from his bed, and chased him from the farm.

Then le canard returned to doing the work around the farm.

“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.

So there I am, listening to the radio, and what comes on but a creche ad for a chain of creches called “Paradise.” I’m sure it seemed like a great idea and all, but hearing repeated exhortations to “send your children to Paradise” just makes me think of cultists or baby suicide bombers.

This is not persuasive.

“Hold still, I’m getting chocolate out of your eyebrows.”

Father and Daughter

It’s the conversations I’ve never expected that throw me for a curve. How do you deal with:

Boy at birthday party: Can I share your daddy?
Ada: No, he is my daddy.
Boy at birthday party: But I don’t have a daddy.

Or when you’re chatting to a guy at a cafe you visit often, and he asks you what you’re doing with your daughter for the weekend. You tell him, and he says, “You sound like a good father. I wish my father had been as good a father as you.”

So, Ada loves Bob the Builder. She loves trucks and screwdrivers and the like. So you’d think that the Bob merchandise would be a slam-dunk for our household.

Nuh-uh.

The problem is that most everything I’ve seen of it is poorly-made shit. Not only does this violate my general thoughts about acceptable toys (they should be tolerably well-made), but it seems to me to be a deep and fundamental betrayal of the series itself, which is, after all, about doing a job properly and minimising waste.

…but to praise them.

I have been hankering for a new set of jeans for Ada for a while, but previous shopping efforts have proven most unsatisfactory. The words “girl” and “jeans” in the same sentence quickly condemn one’s offspring to rows of jeans embroidered with pink butterflies and purple ballerinas. If you’re lucky.

If you aren’t, they’re even less tasteful.

I am not of the opinion, in general, of the opinion that two year olds require vigorous gender marking. This has made searching for some nice jeans a rather vexing experience.

Anyway, I stopped in at Kid Republic while driving through Thorndon on the off-chance, and lo! I was rewarded. I ambled in, explained to the staff that I wanted jeans for my daughter, who was a tall two-and-a-half year old, about a metre tall, and showed them one of her coats (“It’s full length on her”) and explained she’d be out of nappies soonish. With each new piece of information the sales staff grabbed and discarded jeans from the range. The range, I note, which had a wide variety of styles and colours and included many a pair with no over-the-top decoration.

Jeans fitted perfectly, too.

I don’t even feel like Pooja Chopra’s father and I are members of the same species:

WHEN Pooja Chopra was 20 days old, her mother Neera was forced to make a choice - kill her child or forfeit her marriage.
Neera decided to keep her daughter, defying the wishes of a bullying husband who wanted the baby destroyed.

From…

One year ago today, I had bought my wife and daughter home from hospital. My daughter, at her birth weight of 3220 grams, could fit laid out along my forearm, cradled in the palm of my hand. I could walk around the house with her slung there, talking away to her while I went about my business. She cried, and ate, and cuddled, and slept.

The first really useful thing I learned about her was that when whatever upset her wasn’t hunger, chances are I could fix it by laying her face down on my chest while I lay down myself. I felt so perfectly contented and useful.

Today my daughter has perhaps a dozen words. She crawls around at a great rate of knots. She happily flicks through her books herself, sometimes demanding I read to her, but she’s even been known to suggest she’s too busy to be bothered by parents wanting to play.

Today my daughter made her first preparatory visit to the creche she’ll be spending a couple of days a week at so Maire can spend full days at work. She toddled happily off to play with the other children with scarcely a backward glance.

Today my daughter woke up after being put down for the night, screaming for someone to come comfort her—a bad dream, perhaps. I lay on the bed, and lay her on my chest, and sung to her. She snuggled down, and slept, happy and safe and comfortable.

I felt so perfectly contented and useful.