Actually, I'm sure of it.



Nerf's Big Bad Bow is around $42 on Amazon.com.

Z has been filling in pages in the fantastic Dr. Seuss/Roy McKie collaboration My Book About Me, a "tell us about yourself" fill-in-the-blank book for kids, without anyone's help or guidance. She then enjoys comparing her entries with her mother's, as Jenni also filled in the blanks in the same book around thirty years ago. If you didn't have this privilege, let your child start a new family tradition of fork- and door-counting and random self-reflection. This book is good enough that it will still be available thirty years from now, so their kids can create a memory book from their own perspective as well.

You can buy My Book About Me on Amazon for about $9 in hardcover.

The entry above cracks us up. In case you can't read it, here's a closeup of one of the many gems you'll find when your child answers a bunch of survey questions with the utmost sincerity.

There aren't many things as special as the beaming smile of a child who has faced a challenge and has been surprised with the gift of mastery. The following two clips showcase riffs off of skills she's been working on in gymnastics, but now realizes may be applicable outside the gym.





At the close of our oddly parkour-like session in the mall playground, Z confided as we were leaving, with obvious relish, that she "really was sort of showing off in there." She actually did strip down to the leotard before I hastily made her put her shorts back on.

Heaven help us.

Two of 'em.

Zella's baby teeth all came in pretty much at once, and it's looking like they'll all be coming out as fast as they went in. She lost her first one yesterday afternoon, and has three more that are "getting wiggly." According to Zella, who knows a lot more about fairies than we do, the Tooth Fairy doesn't need an opening of any kind to get into the house because she uses magic; does not fly (she walks); and does not offer money as a reward for losing a tooth but as a "trade" because she wants the tooth. We did not get into what use she has for children's teeth, because I was not in a macabre enough mood to ask.

Contrary to the persistent rumor-mongering of my father-in-law, the Tooth Fairy does not give $10 a tooth. The going rate is two bucks, and by "going rate" I mean that this is what every child in the solar system gets, so if you are prepared to contradict me, please do so from Alpha Centauri. (As for her peers, Zella is homeschooled, so she has a harder time fact-checking us.) We'll bump it to $3 at some point just to keep her on her toes.

On a related note, it is in fact possible for a five-year-old to lose a tooth, have it float around in their mouth, and not realize the super-wiggly thing had detached from its moorings until Mom says, "Did you lose your tooth?" and has the child fish around in her gumline. Children themselves are magical beings.

I felt like the dad of a "big girl" last night when, at our local pizza haunt, Zella went into the women's bathroom to wash her hands while I went into the men's (she still has trouble opening the heavy swinging door herself but there is usually someone in there who can help her and she can always yell and holler if not) and encountered a father and his three- or four-year-old daughter having one of those one-and-a-half-way bathroom stall conversations where Dad sounds like he has spent several days in a POW camp while waiting for his child to finish going potty.

"I never realized how long it takes to go to the bathroom until I had a child," I said, trying to talk around the subject just enough so the kid wouldn't feel dissed.

"It takes a loooooooooooooooong time," he agreed.

We went through our less-than-ordinary version of another common childhood milestone last month, one that will get its own post next week.


By way of introduction, be prepared for the fact that we arrived at, and went about, getting Zella's ears pierced the way we do most things: with much research and deliberation, plenty of prepping, and in the end by sacrificing time and money we could otherwise have put towards other things in order to take a road less traveled by. For the moment, I'll just say that I have since uttered the phrase "I know you can do this... you got your ears pierced, remember?" more than once, and I think it kind of works.

We had lunch with friends in Houston last weekend and were discussing the future preschool of S, who is Z's age and headed there soon. Her mother, Monica, described a favorite ritual in the pre-K class whereby the children take daily turns making up a story for the class, which they write down and then re-enact in the afternoon.

It's a lovely idea, but Z's stream-of-consciousness tendencies would have me on the edge of my seat. She just drew me a picture of a caterpillar with eleven vaginas, is fond of drawing pictures of her elders with all of their appropriate parts, and it is not uncommon for her to introduce an air of mystery or finality to a soliloquy by invoking death and/or copious bleeding. We have no problem with such narratives in our own home (indeed, we actively choose not to taboo-ify such talk) but I'd be curious to hear from teachers out there who can tell me how they'd handle such fantasies in a classroom of preschoolers.

Does this kind of talk from a young child bother you? It's the real violence that goes on that I find difficult to discuss. Driving home with Z last week the following exchange occurred that gently broke my heart.

Z: They just said they cut somebody in half.
Me: What? Cut what?
Z: On the radio. They said they cut somebody in half.
Me (Realizing she is talking about the NPR newscast): Oh, Georgia isn't a person - it's a country. A place. They said the Russians cut Georgia in half - they meant the country. What they meant is that the Russians went in there and took over a city in the middle of the country, and so people couldn't get from one part of the country to the other, so the country is sort of cut in half. They blocked the way across.
Z: Who did?
Me: The Russians. Soldiers.
Z: What's a soldier?
Me (Getting nervous): Well... It's a person with a gun who goes with other people to, um, fight.
Z: Like, shooting?
Me: Sometimes.
Z: In that city?
Me: Yes. Some of the people left the city, but some of them stayed to fight.
Z: Why?
Me: Well... they don't want to leave their homes.
Z: So they fight?
Me: Some of them.
Z: And, like, the people get shooted?
Me: Yes, sometimes they get shot.
Z: And killed?
Me: Some. Yes. (Lamely.) But some of them get away.
Z: Oh. (Pause.) What can we do?
Me (Sighing): Nothing, I think.