Comma Dot Comma

Abigail is determined to know everything, right now. And to grow up, right now. Yesterday she spent a fair amount of time “snipping down” her dad and I with imaginary scissors so that she would be the tallest in the house. She constantly asks me for stories about “the time when I was an adult.” In these stories, she suddenly wakes up as an adult who can ride bikes, drive the car, cook dinner, and work for money. These stories fill her with exultation and she climbs onto something tall and asks “what number am I?” She wants to read the adult books on the bookshelf, and to trade shoes with me.

She also asks hard questions, and follow up questions, and follow-ups to the follow ups, all day long. I’ve spent the last few days clarifying to her what germs are. Tonight at dinner she wanted to consolidate her knowledge of germs, resulting in my drawing back-of-an-envelope diagrams of tiny germs floating around and bumping into food, suddenly multiplying into big piles that can make us sick, and being attacked and destroyed by the tiny “fighters” of our immune system. She found the visuals vastly helpful; so helpful, she wanted hug after hug. She now knows about good germs and bad germs, and that they can only be seen with a microscope (she had never heard of a microscope and squealed with excitement at the thought of such a thing existing), and that they live all over our bodies but especially in our mouths, noses, and tummies. Some of her questions about germs: Do they have little rooms in my tummy where they live? Do they have brains? Can they get out of my mouth? Can they jump? What are they when they die? Are we smarter than germs because we are bigger? Do my fighters know nice germs and mean germs? Do the fighters have swords? Are they fast and strong? Do germs and fighters sleep at night? Are germs making me sick with my cough? Are germs making you barf? After I told her that the germs and fighters live in her body like a house, she said, “My neck is a wall for them.” She totally got the simile.

I find all these conversations both exhausting and exhilarating. She learns SO FAST. It is a marvel to witness sometimes, how she connects all the bits and pieces of her understanding into a more and more cohesive whole. And I hope I’m doing okay with answering her in a way that she can understand and will not give her totally false ideas about the world.

We are planning to put her in preschool a couple days a week starting later in the spring. Earlier than I originally wanted (she’s only two and a half, after all), but she is craving more social interaction with other children than I can manage to provide, and it will also be good to have her used to it before the twins come a long and putting her there is a necessity. I laugh imagining what the teachers will do with her once she becomes comfortable enough to ask questions like those on this list of a day’s discussion topics that I wrote down recently:

why do cacti have thorns and not leaves?
babies are people, so why don’t they have teeth?
what is God’s name?
does Jesus have a body like us? why does Jesus have a body and God NOT have a body?
Are angel bodies like God or like Jesus? Do they have feet?
What are enemies?
Were we all kids once?
Can the babies be two Diegos?
What animals don’t have feet? Why don’t they?
Fish swim with fins. What do people swim with? (her answer: swimming suits)

Oh, Abi, Abi, my tiny, little bitty lightweight, voraciously curious little girl.

One thing I know that I know about my beliefs concerning God, the world, and the afterlife is that I could be wrong. Most likely I am wrong about at least SOME things, and maybe many. Nonetheless I live and act according to my beliefs the best that I am able, and try to be responsible to the truth I’ve received. I am committed to passing it on to my children as well. But the “could be wrong” element fills me with humility as I begin teaching Abigail about the unseen. She asks me a lot about what God and Jesus can do. Did they make the trees? Did they make our family? did they make my toys? Today’s car ride was an especially interesting one, as we had been listening to a Laurie Berkner song with these words: “You’re not perfect, no you’re not. You’re not perfect, but you’ve got what you’ve got. You do your very best each day. You’re not perfect, and I love you that way.” This conversation ensued:

Abi: Are you perfect, Mom?
Me: No, I’m not. Are you?
Abi: No.
Me: But I love you that way.
Abi: And I love you that way!
Me: We love each other.
Abi: And Jesus loves us.
Me: Yes he does! And you know what? Jesus IS perfect.
Abi: He is? (she thinks about this a bit)
Me: Yes.
Abi: Can Jesus make us perfect?
Me: (thinking about it a bit) Yes, he can.
Abi: Is he making us perfect right now?
Me: Yes. But it takes a long, long time. Our whole lives. We have to grow up and even get old while Jesus makes us perfect.
Abi: Are you grown up?
Me: Yes. But I’m not perfect yet.
Abi: I’m growing up right now!

Abigail has very little idea what perfect means, but this conversation still felt powerful to me, not the least because it reminded me of the hope I have for my own future and that of my family, in a week in which my failings and weaknesses have seemed determined to define me. And of course it reminded me of the power of love to cover over a multitude of sins. Thanks, Laurie Berkner. Thanks, Jesus. Thanks, Abigail.

Abigail is really into singing lately. Her current favorite toy is a rainbow stacker that plays music when all of the pieces are stacked up. She has discarded the pieces and just pushes the button with her finger to get a nice background track for whatever song or dance she has in mind. She will play it over and over for her whole nap time sometimes, composing and refining different songs. She calls this toy her singing umbrella.

One of my favorite nap time songs recently went like this:

I’m a big girl
In the whole wide world
And if you want me
just yell PSSHT CHA CHA PSSHT CHA CHA PSSHT!

That bit at the end there is beat boxing. She’s got pretty good technique. I also love the shared compositions she invents with her dad when he starts strumming D and G on the guitar and they alternate lines.

Dad: Hands are not food
Abi: But they taste like pasta
Dad: But you should spit them out
Abi: And say PLAH

Chorus: PLAH PLAH PLAH PLAH PLAH

Abigail likes real songs, too. The other night she sang the entire first verse of “Good King Wenceslas” while her dad played the piano, feeding her the lines one by one. She probably didn’t understand a word of it but the pronunciation was spot-on.

Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the feast of Stephen
When the snow lay round about
Deep and crisp and even
Brightly shone the moon that night
Though the frost was cruel
When a poor man came in sight
Gath’ring winter fuel

Her singing is still a low-register, moany, tuneless bray and it makes me so happy.

Apparently, Abigail is not the center of the universe after all. I’ve had some temporary medical restrictions put on my normal activities, and a few different people have come to take up the slack, and Abigail, while able to roll with it, is still disgruntled. First, Abi’s beloved and loving Auntie Marie came for several days (and did not even flinch at cleaning poop out of the potty!) She took Abigail to the museum and to the fair and generally made life fun. Even so, Abigail was getting snippy with her by the time she left and refusing to let Marie take her to the potty or help her get dressed.

Next, I hired my friend Kathy as a part-time nanny/mother’s helper for a few weeks. I thought Kathy’s kind, gentle demeanor and grandmotherly affection would be a great fit with Abigail– the two of them seem to be kindred spirits in kindness. But, alas, Abigail dislikes having to spend every morning with someone other than me, even someone very nice and up for a good time. Once they got back from an outing and I wasn’t home from my own errand-running yet. Meltdown. That night, she asked for a story in which Swiper was mad at his mommy. I started in on a story in which his mommy wouldn’t let him have all the candy. “No. Not that,” said Abigail. “Swiper’s mommy went to buy clothes and she wasn’t there when Swiper came.” Message received. A few days after that, she emerged from naptime with the announcement, “I don’t want nobody in my house. Just you and me and daddy.” Sigh.

We’ve still got four more days with Kathy, one day with her fave babysitter, and then three days with my mom. Abigail knows that the doctor says I can’t pick her up and I can’t run around a lot and so on, but she doesn’t see why that means bringing in other people. I usually absent myself so that she will allow them to care for her (if I’m around, she will demand me instead). So I think she feels a bit like she is being foisted off on others so I can go shopping and get haircuts. Why, she wonders, would I pick a haircut over her? Good thing it’s just temporary!

It was really hard to get out the door to church this morning. Well, we got out the door, but one of us was crumpled on the sidewalk, sobbing over the sad and unexpected fate of Uncle Teaspoon. She was unpersuadable for quite some time. None of the other spoons could console her.

Abi had a plastic cup full of plastic spoons of different sizes and colors, and I’d given her permission to take it in the car. These spoons were, of course, an entire family: babies, parents, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles. Just before we left, she stuck another favorite spoon into the cup, a metal measuring spoon that I immediately removed on our way out the door because I didn’t want it to get lost. It took awhile for me to figure out why she was so heartbroken. “I want uncle to come,” she wailed, again and again. Uncle? Who was uncle? Oh. Right. The teaspoon.

We told her she didn’t need it. We told her Uncle Teaspoon wanted to stay home. We told her he needed to stay and get lunch ready for the other spoons. He wanted to watch over the house while we were gone. Abigail was having none of it at first, but finally she calmed enough for me to wipe her tears and put her in her carseat. “Can Uncle Teaspoon come with us now, mommy? Please?” she asked.

“No. I told you. Uncle Teaspoon wants to stay home and and make spoon lunch.”
Her dad started the car. “I am really appreciating the absurdity of this conversation,” he said.
Abi resigned herself to the situation and played with her other spoons.

Abigail has compiled a list of things her dad loves: work. baseball. coffee. mints. bananas. cereal with honey. the green ones in multi-colored pasta. She’s wrong about the green pasta, but right about the rest. Whenever she sees any of these items, she wants to save it for daddy. When she eats pasta, she will make a little pile of the green ones to keep for him. Any time she spots a shelf of Altoids in a store, she wants to buy them for him. Ditto the bulk beans in the coffee aisle. If she happens to catch a glimpse of a ball game on a TV screen, she sits to watch it on her dad’s behalf because “Daddy loves this!” It is her job to choose the bananas for daddy at the grocery store, too.

Abigail is also determined to love the things her dad loves. She sits at the computer desk and types her “work.” She wears his baseball hat and shouts “Go, Miguel!” during games, though the Diamondbacks are now out of the running. She dips her finger in his coffee and sits on his lap when he eats his morning cereal, intercepting as many bites as possible. She crunches mints with passion. Her total devotion* is the cutest thing in the world. I’m glad her dad is such a good man; surely she emulates him not just in a preference for mints and honey, but other, less obvious ways as well. And she will be a better girl because of it.

*Except when it comes to music. Her dad loves music, both playing and listening, and she will have none of it. She mutes the strings on his guitar and yells for him to stop. She covers her ears when he puts on a song he thinks she will like. He keeps trying, though! Someday Abigail will be a music lover in spite of herself.

Potty training was one of those toddler parenting things I dreaded most. After all the stories of year-long-struggles and poop on the walls and fears of frogs in the toilets and ruined furniture and embarrassing accidents in public, I just didn’t want to get into it. But it hasn’t been that bad. We did a little bit when Abi was 18 months old because she suddenly insisted on it, but once she realized that going in the potty didn’t happen automatically, she was over it.

We picked it back up again about six weeks ago, and she is doing really well. She’d probably be doing better if I were more consistent. One thing about potty training is it trains the parent, too– I have to be always on the ball, stripping her of her diapers immediately after outings and sleeps, constantly keeping track of the time and her liquid intake for potty trips, and so on. I do not always do this. Why not? Because it is hard.

We did the well-hydrated naked child method. It took her about half a day to get the basics of peeing in the potty and one more day to really nail it down, though pooping in the potty has been tougher. As I’ve written before, she is a private naptime pooper. And once she realized that this whole peeing in the potty thing was not just a game, but would be the story of her life forever, Abi rebelled a bit. She’d shout I’M FINE! and struggle mightily every time I tried to take her to the potty. A few timeouts straightened that scene out. (Reason to be grateful #7,219– a few timeouts are all it takes to correct my child’s behavior. Worked for throwing food on the floor, picking up toys, and potty tantrums. WHAT LUCK!) She still often shouts that she is fine, but will sulk her way in there and try, muttering the whole time, instead of fighting it.

A few weeks ago she got to the point where she was having no accidents at all when she was naked. Put her in underwear, though, and she’d forget that they weren’t waterproof and just let her rip. We had a discussion about how underwear are NOT pull-ups, which she seemed to get right away, and this week I started insisting that she wear underwear most of the day, including out around town. She loves using public toilets for some reason and will nearly always say that she has to go, just for the chance to check out the latest stall. Yesterday she finished up and announced, “And now we look under!” No, we don’t. I think she got a glimpse of the person in the neighboring stall before I could grab her. Her cuteness really pays off in these situations– people smile indulgently instead of getting offended.

She’s been doing remarkably well with the underwear stuff, though today she had two accidents (her first in about four days). Next I have to figure out what to do about the whole naptime thing. Do I leave her in there naked, with a potty? She wouldn’t decide to play with whatever ends up in the potty, would she? Hm. Or put her in there in underwear, and tell her to hold it until naptime is over? It’s only an hour, and she never sleeps anyway. Hm.

So. I have this totally immature thing I do. When I am frustrated by some task or object, I reach a certain point where I yell “AARRRGH!” and then do some angry dismissive gesture, such as throwing my hands in the air, stomping a foot, or even, in my most loosey-goosey phases, flipping the offending object the bird. My one-second tantrum defuses the stress and makes me laugh, and I can move on or try again. I realize it is really unattractive behavior, but it is in the privacy of my own home. It works for me! Or rather, it worked. Past tense.

Now I have a perceptive two-year-old observer in the privacy of my own home. She has witnessed my one-second tantrums once or twice a week for her whole life, and now she enacts them three or four times a day, in response her own frustrations. Of course, yelling AARRGH! and making an angry gesture is completely appropriate behavior for a two-year-old. But boy, was there a sinking feeling in my stomach when I finally recognized that Abi AAARRGH as my own personal immature adult AAARRRGH. Same volume, same duration, same emphasis, same everything. She thinks this is what people are supposed do when they are frustrated! Whoops. Do as I say and not as I do, dear child.

Abigail constantly asks for stories. I indulge her as much as I can, but she makes it hard by dictating not only major characters, but plot points. If I try to borrow a plot from a book or TV show, she stops me and says, “No. a NEW story.” Here are her requests, verbatim, from ONE afternoon. Sometimes I forget that she just turned two.

Mommy, tell me a…

Swiper story–
In a cold building with turkey in it
Stuck in a pasta costume
with his mommy eating his pee candy costume
fishing for boots
trapped in his tower
trapped in a tower with his mommy and daddy with sleeping bags and pillows
in the toothpaste
in the sink having a big fiesta
saying “it it it it it”
stuck in his own helicopter
trapped in an airplane, a flying airplane with wings and not pedals
blueberry Swiper in a blueberry costume rolling around like a little ball
gray black and pink swiper with paint on his toes and his tail
being nice with Dora

cat story–
cats on an airplane with Captain Swiper
getting blueberry juice in a cat cup

story when you were a little baby.

The rain showers and storms of the past few days have been a stark reminder that yes, I do live in the dry bones desert. Why? Because rain is far too rare for Abigail to take it for granted. It’s an anomaly to be studied and discussed and analyzed by her methodical little brain. She stood at the window for most of a rain shower a few evenings ago, watching the water droplets hit the pool and the patio. She wanted to know if we would stay dry inside the house while it was so wet outside. “Yes, because our house has a nice strong roof,” I told her. She thought about this for awhile. “And it has doors that are shut. And windows and walls,” she added. Her thoughts then went to her father, away at work in his eight-story “castle.” Was he dry, too? Yes, he was safe and warm and dry. “Because he’s working in a building,” Abigail confirmed. “He has a jacket.”

The next morning she spent quite some time peering at the blue and grey and white patchwork of sky. “It’s starting to rain, Mommy,” she announced. I told her it wasn’t. “The wind starts to blow hard, then the sky gets dark with clouds, and maybe we hear some thunder. THEN it starts to rain,” I explained. “Rain clouds make thunder,” Abigail deduced. She thought a little more. “Tonight it will get dark and then soon it will be rain.” Well, not quite. I wonder how many rainstorms it will take before all the pieces fit together in Abigail’s mind.

I think Dr. G. and I have at least seven mix tapes of rain-related songs, put together in our days in rainy Oregon. How distant all that water feels today. Abigail keeps begging me to take her to the Hundred Acre Wood. She wants tall trees and creeks and honey. I’m hoping I can at least get her to the West Fork of the Oak Creek Canyon when the apples are ripe.

“No Rain” by Blind Melon