One of the things that we’re trying to teach Natalie right now is how to use the TV remote control. She can already turn the TV on and off, but that just involves pressing a big button on the bottom of the TV. But if she turns on the TV and she doesn’t want to watch, say, “Meet the Press” or “Iron Chefs” then one of us needs to come and change the channel. This may not sound like much of an inconvenience, but after five years of being woken up at 6am we’re just too tired. It will be a great day when Natalie will be able to just go downstairs and tune the TV to “Martha Speaks”.

But I digress. This is not a story about teaching Natalie to use the remote.

Natalie wanted to turn off the TV upstairs in our bedroom last week. The TV is mounted on the wall and she can’t reach it, so she needed to use the remote. I told her to bring me the remote and I showed her that the button on the side at the top of the remote turned the TV on and off. And then it happened…

“You mean the button on the left?”

“Huh?”

Natalie reciting the Gettysburg address in Latin would have surprised me less. Natalie doesn’t know her left and right! We’ve never even discussed this. And yet here she was not just declaring her left and right, but doing it correctly (and without making a “L” with her thumb and forefinger by the way).

Natalie still only gets her shoes on the right foot about 70% of the time. How the heck did she learn left and right?

I asked her if they were teaching left and right in pre-school or on her TV shows. Nope. So I asked where she learned it and got an even bigger surprise.

“You taught me daddy”

Double “Huh?”

I’m not sure which is more concerning – that Natalie is learning things from me that I don’t recall teaching her or that I need to talk to my doctor about an Alzheimer test.

I suppose it doesn’t matter. I’ll probably just forget about both.

"Word Up"

At the dawn of time man created the word. But what did it mean? To explain its meaning he (or she) needed another word. So now he had two words that essentially described each other.

This is one of the challenges of being the parent of a five year old.

At least once a day Natalie asks me what a word means. And she’s not shy about it either. If I’m talking to her and I use a word she doesn’t know, she’ll stop the conversation to ask me. Usually we’ll talk a little bit about the word and make sure she understands it and then move on.

But occasionally (meaning more often than I like to admit) Natalie asks what a word means and I’ll say “A means B”. Natalie then wants to know what B means, and the first explanation that comes to mind is “B means A”. In logic, this is called a circular reference.

Yesterday Natalie asked me what “meant”, well, meant. (As in “I meant to eat all of Natalie’s Easter candy while she was asleep”). I explained that it was when someone did something on purpose. If only it ended there. Natalie then wanted to know what “on purpose” means and my immediate response was that it means someone meant to do something.

Huh?

Do you know what it’s like for a five year old little girl to look at you like you’re an idiot, but is too nice to say it? I do.

If only she could read. Then I could send her to her little girl dictionary.

At just to confound me (which does happen more than I would like) I’ll use a word and then realize that Natalie may not know what it means. Yesterday, it was “enthusiastic”.

“Natalie, do you know what enthusiastic means”

“Yes. It means to be excited about something”

Huh?

Natalie asked me this morning if I thought she was smarter than me. I said “Yes”

I'm (not) Just A Girl

Most of you will recall that Natalie attended the Presidential Inauguration in January. We lived so close that I could not imagine not taking her to this historical event. Not that she would understand the significance (though she certainly does remember being there). I wanted her to be able to say "I was there".

Several weeks ago Natalie and her mom were talking about the inauguration. She understands that the President is an important person and makes a lot of decisions impacting everyone in the country. Natalie's mom was explaining that Barack was the first President to be elected with dark skin. She went on to explain that there was a time when some people wouldn't like that, but that his election showed that not very many people felt that way anymore.

Natalie of course was totally oblivious to the possibility that someone's skin color might have an effect on, well, anything. Instead the only question she asked was…

"Can a girl be President?"

It's been great watching her first five years, but I'm absolutely certain that the next 25 are going to be fascinating.

That's Quite a Load You Have There

When you’re preparing to have kids (which by the way is absolutely impossible) one of the things that you start to realize is how much you don’t know. This knowledge breaks down into three categories: the things you know you don’t know (how to change a diaper), the things that you know, but don’t fully understand (the cumulative impact of perpetual sleep deprivation over 18 years), and what I like to call the “are you kidding me” (or the “what the &+@#&*%*&^%*” ) issues. This last category is made of things that never came near the threshold of contemplation until you realize that they’ve become your life. This musing deals with an issue that falls into the last of these categories.

Laundry may seem like an innocuous task. Everybody wears clothes and all of it needs to be washing. It should be added to the “death and taxes” quote. And it could even stand to reason that a young child who plays outside, draws with magic markers and does not yet know how to accurately convey food from her plate to her mouth might require more than the typical number of outfits washed.

But it’s not the number of outfits that needs washing. It’s the volume. I know it sounds like a subtle distinction, but when it comes too little girl clothes there is a significant difference.

From even a short distance away a laundry basket of adult or kid clothing looks remarkably similar. A closer look will reveal some differences. An average basket of adult clothes might contain 4-5 pairs of pants, a few t-shirts, 1-2 dress shirts and a few “personal” items. But your average basket of little girl clothing contains 375 pairs of pants, 298 shirts, 431 pairs of underpants and 16 blankies. Keep in mind both baskets take up exactly the same amount of space!

The washing and drying processes aren’t really an issue. The washer and dryer don’t care how many princess underpants there are – just that they fit into the machine. The real issue is folding them…there is absolutely no efficiency gains in the folding of kids clothing vs. adult clothing. It takes exactly the same amount of time to fold little, itty, bitty Tinkerbell underpants as it does to fold boxer shorts.

So I go in to the laundry room to fold the last basket of clothing and then I realize – it’s the colored load…

(Another thing you don’t realize until you have kids – their clothes have color and ours do not. If you think I’m kidding take a look at the next three pre-schoolers you see. I will guarantee that you all three will be wearing colors that you wouldn’t even consider wearing.)

…so what would normally be a 10 minute chore all of a sudden take 2 hours.

So if you’re wondering why it’s been so long since I posted the last blog, it’s been because I was folding little girl underpants.