When my daughter was very little, she would wake up in the morning and coo to herself in her crib. I remember standing just outside her door and listening to that tiny pipsqueak voice and being awed by the fact that she was learning her own voice.
Kids do tend to grow up quickly, though. The other morning, I was the first one up and sat quietly with a cup of coffee in a rare moment of calm. After a short while, I heard a little voice coming from my daughter's room and decided to peek in on her for old time's sake.
She was lying on her back with her arms straight up, swiveling a panda Pillow Pet above her face and singing, "Put your hand upon my hip, when I dippydippydip..."
I spend time tutoring my girl on the finer points of etiquette. For example, she has inherited a deep affection for Cheez-Its, and we've been working on politeness. She started with "Chee cracka." Soon, she was up to "Cheese cracker, please?"
Children of a certain age are very much like parrots. So when "Can I have some cheese crackers please, Daddy?" became routine, I decided to spice things up a bit. The look on her grandma's face the first time she said, "Polly want a cracker. SQUAWK!" was priceless. She even used the parrot voice we've been working on. Gosh, was I proud of her.
My dad knows about 4 words of German. He speaks the language to his dog and his grandchildren. In other words, the two mammalian groups most easily impressed by almost anything and incapable of knowing the difference.
He was teasing his granddaughter and asked her if she spoke German. When she nodded yes, he cracked up and told her she was a joker. "Du. Du Hast. Du Hast Mich!" she said, with a deep growl and much conviction.
Who says nothing good can come from letting a toddler listen to Rammstein? Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Benjamin Spock. Those daddy-daughter dates are really paying dividends. If she can learn one more word of Deutsche, she'll be tied with ihr Großvater.
One promise that I've kept is to not use R-rated words in front of a G-movie crowd. She can learn all that when she goes to school, just like I did. But everyone knows that nothing is more fun than stepping on a Lego while barefooted.
When it inevitably happens to me, it is now second nature for me to exclaim, "Mother Goose!" or something to that effect. (The 'goose' noun is a fairly new addition to my vocabulary)
We took a drive to look at Christmas lights one evening. We came upon one house that was straight out of Christmas Vacation, only more insane. A family had music playing on an external sound system, with the lights synched up to strobe with the beats of the music. "Holy Shish Kabob, Daddy! Lookit that!" That was a close one.
As father, I am a magician and a healer. I can make Sesame Street appear every morning at 7 through my supernatural powers, and with a simple kiss I can make all the boo-boos go away.
Nothing can make one so happily exhilirated or so frightened: It’s a solid lesson in the limitations of self to realize that your heart is running around inside someone else’s body.
But there are some situations I do not have the power to remedy.
The other day, she announced that she was going to go potty. She wanted to go by herself, and I decided that I'd let her give it a shot. Big mistake.
I heard the toilet flush, and I felt great satisfaction that my little one was growing up. A few minutes later, I heard it flush again. And again. After a fourth flush, I decided to investigate.
"Look Daddy! They're swimming!" she announced with a giant smile. Sure enough, all the rubber duckies from her bath basket were indeed taking a Tilt-a-Whirl ride inside the ol' Kohler. Oh, man. What to do, what to do? I'm pretty sure Toilet Duck isn't meant for cleaning ducks in a toilet.
Sure, I could have probably boiled them...but then I would have absolutely had to throw away a perfectly good pot. Cheaper to just get a new pack of ducks, according to my shrewd calculus. Much to her distress, I had to toss them out.
She was beside herself with sorrow at the loss of her beloved ducks. I asked her why she put her ducks in the toilet, and she responded with the very helpful, "Because I did."
I tried to dig deeper, and she said she did it because they wanted to swim. Doubtful, I told her. Finally, she confessed, "I don't know how to turn the bathtub on. I wanted to play with my duckies." Fair enough.
Thinking myself a wise sage on the cusp of a great 'teachable moment' (gag), I explained that you go potty in the toilet and play with ducks in the bathtub. You wouldn't go potty in the tub, right?
She scrunched up her brow and gave me the 'what, are you an idiot?' look. "But Dad, I go potty in the bathtub."
