Apple Pickin'

Several weekends ago Natalie engaged in a time-honored seasonal right untaken by all suburbanites at this time of year - she went apple-picking.

Now for those city-folk among you who don’t know what an apple tree looks like (they’re ugly) and those county-folk among you who cannot envision spending a weekend doing what migrant workers get paid to do during the week, let me explain…

Apple picking is not just the act of walking through an orchard searching for the perfect Juli apple. It is an event of great activity! There’s apple-cider, apple-music, apple-baking, apple-wine (which tastes just the way you think it would), apple-crafts, apple-parking problems and mud. And because it's near Halloween, some regular non-apple pumpkins.

And there's also people-watching! I stood next to the decorative pumpkin display (imagine funny shapes and strange colors) while a guy with a French accent went on an on about how the big orange pumpkins didn’t cook nearly as well as the funny, mis-shaped purple ones. “Stupide Americans – first Iraq and now theese” (that was a French accent)

Do you know how big a bushel of apples is? It's about the size of a full brown paper bag. After the first dozen pies, what can you use that many apples for? And yet every other person at the checkout was buying at least a bag, and often more, full of apples (the toting off of course was done by their husbands).

Natalie picked the obligatory apples. But, what you can’t see in the picture (or the 17 pictures that didn’t make this blog) is that she’s standing on Dad’s head to get the apple that is 9 feet off the ground. All the good apples below 9 feet were gone. Of course we only walked 25 feet into the orchard. For all I know they might have been at eye level for Natalie if we went 100 feet in.

She picked out a pumpkin. This is not a task to be taken lightly if your four years old. Is it orange enough? Does it sit straight? Is it round enough? And most importantly – is it heavy enough to require a chiro visit by Dad after he carries it 300 yards to the car?

But the highlight of Natalie’s day was taking a picture of the geraniums at the entrance to the apple orchard. Does she take pictures of the geraniums on our deck? No way – those didn’t require an hour car ride.

Real Change

Last weekend, before the election, we booted up the computer and surfed to the latest political news. Natalie looked at the computer and said “Look. It’s Barack Obama and John McCain.”

Huh?

Natalie’s mom asked if dad had taught her those people’s names.

“No. I saw them on TV”

OK. That made sense given the number of TV ads being aired.

Now came the real question….

“Natalie, which one is Barack Obama?”

“The one with the hair, silly”

From the mouths of babes….

Bootie Call

“Natalie asked me what ‘bootie’ means today”

Just because they’ve got really small ears, doesn’t mean they’re not listening.

“Where did she hear that word?” Was it at school? A friend’s house? I knew it wasn’t from a rap video on MTV – they don’t play videos anymore.

“She said it was in the movie you took her to yesterday”

Let the guilt and the perplexity begin. Have I scarred my daughter? What else have I exposed her to? First the fort thing and now this?!?

Now this movie was about a rich, Beverly Hills Chihuahua getting lost in Mexico and trying to find her way home. I thought back to the movie. I didn’t specifically recall that word being used, but I couldn’t be sure. I’d been a good parent and checked the parent reviews before going to the movie – some liked it, some thought it was boring – but no one mentioned anything about language.

(Brief Interlude – you may not realize this, but movie studios do not make G movies anymore – even the cartoons are PG. There might be 5 G movies released in a year, but neither the kid nor the parent want to see them.)

So now it was time for the conversation.

“Natalie, sometimes people use that word for a girl’s bottom. But it’s not a nice word and little girls shouldn’t use it.”

“But I’m not a little girl. I’m a big girl”

“That’s right you’re a big (little) girl. But you still shouldn’t use that word.”

“OK”

And believe it or not - that’s it. She asked a question and got an answer. She shouldn’t use the word, so she won’t. In fact, if another kid uses the word around her, she might even tell them they shouldn’t use the word. She’s that good a kid.

Problem solved. Another crisis of child-rearing averted. Just another day in the life of super-dad.

It was at that moment of self-satisfaction that I remembered that the Beverly Hills Chihuahua was wearing booties on her feet during the movie.

"I pooped in the potty today"

"I pooped in the potty today"

Those six words still make my heart stop.

"Really? Did Miss Valerie help you?" (Miss Valerie watches Natalie on Monday and Tuesday after preschool.)

"No. I just went and did it myself."

If you don't have kids, stop reading. Because I can't possibly convey the magnitude of those words - it's just not possible. If you do have kids, stop reading. Because you already understand what I'm about to say. The rest of you, keep reading.

Natalie is the world's greatest kid (really!). Not a week goes by when someone doesn’t complement how polite she is, how kind she is or how good she is at sharing. (All her mom's doing by the way).

But HOLY COW this kid didn’t want to get potty trained!

The problem wasn’t with #1. It was ALL #2. And it wasn’t about “could she?” It was all about control and she had it. All of it. I imagine her playing with her Barbies and telling them how fun it was to mess with mommy’s and daddy’s heads.

Today’s world of kid-raising is more competitive than a Yankees-Red Sox playoff series. I can’t tell you the number of times that we heard the following: “My little pooky-face was potty trained by 8 months and it only took 14 minutes to teach her.” Parent-speak translation “I’m a better parent than you’ll ever be. You are a complete, total and utter failure at child-rearing.”

Now I had taken the long view on this – Natalie was not going to college without being potty trained. But even my confidence had begun to erode.

The worst part was, you KNEW when she had to go! She got a little fidgety. Complained her tummy hurt. But, sit her on the potty – nothing. Until you pulled up her pants.

And all those tips that everyone has – we tried them all. When someone offered, our response was inevitably “Yeah, we tried that 8 months ago”.

Finally, it all came down to a battle of wills. Natalie had to go and we knew it. Appropriately enough it was July 4th. I put Natalie in her chair and I sat in mine. We stared across the room at each other like two cowboys at high noon. I told her she could do anything she wanted – read, play, listen to music – but she was either in that chair or on the potty. Meanwhile I kicked back with “War and Peace”. At about page 312 she said she had to go. But alas, nothing. Page 438 – same thing. Finally at page 567 – IT HAPPENED!

The world changed for me that day. It got a little brighter. The angels sang a little bit louder. I imagine that any parent whose child just discovered the cure for cancer couldn’t be prouder. And let me tell you - since that day you can count on both hands the number of times she’s had an accident (as long as you’re a 17-fingered mutant).

So next time you see your Mom or Dad and they look like they’re having a bad day, be sure to tell them…

“I pooped in the potty today”

Failure and Redemption

As a father, I have failed my daughter. But through recognition and I can begin to seek redemption.

Let me explain…

Sunday, as Natalie was watching football she suggested that we build a fort in our TV room. She has these wonderful cardboard blocks that required a working knowledge of building design to assemble. In fact I put them together with the help of a professional builder (remember Dave?). Anyway, these blocks are nearly indestructible, at least for little girls (and I would imagine little boys).

Not remembering the blocks (although they were sitting right across the room), I suggested that she build a fort our of the coach cushions.

Natalie said “Build them out of couch cushions?” and gave me that look that our Lab, Scout, gives me when I’m explaining what I do for a living. You know the look – kind of quizzical with the head cocked to one side.

That was when I realized I’d failed my daughter.

See my job is to teach her to be fearless, educate her on the finer subtleties of cheeseburgers and show her other useless stuff in life, like how to whistle, make paper airplanes, to maximize the splash when she jumps in puddles AND HOW TO MAKE FORTS OUT OF COACH CUSHIONS!

That I hadn’t done this, or even realized that I hadn’t done this, until she was 4 years, 5 months and 24 days old will go down as one of my great tragedies as a father.

I knew I could fix this. I promptly ripped all the cushions, pillows and blankets off the couch and started building. We used chairs and footstools for greater structural integrity, built a grand entrance, and best of all, added a skylight for Natalie to poke her head out of.

Needless to say, Natalie, having never known such a thing was possible, was AMAZED! At that point, she took control – we needed a blanket to hide the secret entrance and cushions to line the floor. Once that was done, we needed to build a fort for blankie. I don’t speak blankie, but Natalie assured me that the pile of pillows covered by a blanket were very impressive to blankie…

Next weekend we’re going to take the cushions off the couch in the other rooms and build a multi-room, multi-story fort. All that sounded cool, but Natalie made me promise that it would have a skylight for her to poke her head out of.

Life's Not Fair

But yesterday, life was a fair...

Natalie and I spent yesterday at the Virginia State Fair.

I've wanted to go to the state fair for the past three years, but something always seemed to get in the way. So even though we'd both been up since 6am, I'd already driven to and from Charlottesville for a class and Jen was away for the weekend, I thought that we'd give it a shot. I expected that we'd be there for 1-2 hrs, have a meltdown and go home. I was a whole lot more fun than that!

Before we went I showed Natalie the web site for the fair and we agreed that we would do 2 Natalie things, 1 Daddy thing, 2 Natalie things...you get the idea. It didn't quite work out that way - big surprise. She was very excited, though I don't think she knew why.

While there were a lot of people at the fair, the lines were surprisingly short. Usually she just had to wait for the current ride to end. As a result, she went on the merry go round twice, the car ride twice and I'm sure several other rides twice that I can't remember.

After a few rides (definitely more than two) we left the kiddie ride area so that I could get a hot dog. Somehow I ended up with a very small pretzel and Natalie ended up with an ice cream cone that was almost as tall as she was. I'm not sure that you could call it ice cream though because I'm certain that there was neither ice nor cream in it.

We walked through the livestock area (can you go to a state fair and not do this?) and saw alpacas, steer, lamb, guinea pigs, roosters and much, much more. Natalie's favorite animal was (no jokes please) a pig that was a big as I was. I'm not kidding! It must have been 6' long! It could have made the biggest BLT ever!

We then went back for some more rides. The first was the boat ride so that I could wash the gross, sticky ice cream smudge off her hands. You had to see her hands - I'm certain they were dirtier than the water, meaning that the net germ/dirt flow would have been away from Natalie.

After a few rides we then decided to get some more food and go see some of the shows. We got some popcorn - or I should say, Natalie got some popcorn. I reached in and grabbed a handful and she literally grabbed the popcorn out of my hand, put it back and told me to ask next time.

After watching the aerial troupe we went back to the rides and Natalie went straight for the two rides that I NEVER thought she would go on. The first was a - well I don't know what it was. Kind of a swing, kind of a bouncy thing, kind of a bungee thing (see the picture). Natalie's not a fan of new things and this was definitely new. But she wanted to do it. I didn't even prompt her.

To top it all off, the next ride she wanted to go on was the Ferris Wheel. Earlier in the day, she didn't even want to walk near it. When we got on it she screamed every time we travelled from the top to the bottom. The good, I'm having fun, little girl shriek, not the scared, gonna poop in my pants-type scream.

So what did we learn today?

1) No matter how tired you are, you can always find the energy to go to the fair.

2) The Virginia State Fair has the CLEANEST restrooms of any public event I've ever attended.

3) Never leave Natalie alone with Cheese Fries.

4) If you lose your car in the parking lot at the state fair there are 15 other guys with the bright idea to use their remote car alarm to find their car too.