Hey Fiona, I Want an iPhone

We're on vacation in San Diego this week. Yesterday, after we got off the plane and were walking through the terminal we passed a large fountain that's just inside the security gate. Fiona's used it before, and she recognized it right away.

"I want to make a wish!" she announced.

Andrea fished in her pockets and couldn't find any pennies, but she did produce a nickel, which for all I know may have helped with what transpired next.

Fiona held the nickel for a moment and declared "I wish for a pony!"

It was a very little girl thing to wish for, and a woman who was sitting on the fountain ledge nearby laughed in recognition of the cliché.

And then we proceeded past the security gate and met Nana and Pop. Nana had brought a gift for Fiona. Check it out:


Trust me, we're never skipping past that fountain on future trips.

I Knew This Day Would Come

The true story of my heroic (and successful) attempt not to bust out laughing at an inappropriate moment:

This evening Fiona and I were talking about the other kids at day care. She told me that "Christian always says 'not my problem.' You say something and he says 'not my problem.'"

I laughed a little, picturing a two year old who'd obviously picked something up from an older sibling, and then told Fiona "you know, that's not a nice thing to say. If you get bigger and say that a lot, people won't like to hear that."

"No," nodded Fiona. "It's not a nice word."

"That's right," I replied.

"You know what else is a bad word?" she asked.

"What?"

"Shit."

Photos

New photos over at Papa & Grandma's site; check the blogroll to the right and enjoy!

Baby's First Eggplant Parm

Okay, it wasn't technically eggplant parm, since we were out of cheese, but look who's doing the breading!

Pondering the Mysteries of the Universe

Sometime after I was asked why she had to take a bath but before the moment I was asked why people walk on their feet it hit me: we've entered the "why" phase parents have been warning us about for years.

Even so, I still didn't feel prepared for some of the following questions:

1) During bedtime, I sing "Down to the River to Pray" to Fiona (that's a song from the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. Fiona has three regular lullabies, and one comes from a Coen Brothers movie and another is a Tom Waits song from his adaptation of Wozzeck. Which means I have a daughter who has learned to like Tom Waits about twenty years before I did). The opening lyrics are "As I went down to the river to pray/studying about that good old way..."

Fiona interrupted to ask:

Fiona: What's the good old way?

Daddy: Well, it's, um... (realizing where this is about to head) the Bible actually.

Fiona: What's the Bible?

Daddy: (wondering how to get in and out of this topic in 30 seconds or less since it is bedtime) It's a book.

Fiona: What's the book about?

Daddy: It's about God.

Fiona: What's God?

Daddy: Well, he's... a...

Fiona: Is He a person?

Daddy: He's a being who watches over everybody all the time.

Fiona: Is he silly?

2) Another night, right before bed, Fiona asks about Buddy. She knows he died, but right as I'm tucking her in she decides it's a good time to ask:

"Where's Buddy now?"

"He's in heaven," I reply.

"Is he happy?"

And I start scrambling through the mental notes I made about how to talk to your child about death, since you're supposed to comfort them but you also want to be wary of talking too much about it being "a better place" since you don't exactly want your child walking around saying "I want to die." Speaking of which...

3) One night at dinner while her mother is conveniently off at a play, Fiona starts asking about her grandparents' parents. Fiona has two more living great-grandparents than I did at her age, but that still means six are gone.

Fiona: They died?

Daddy: Yes they did.

Fiona: Do people die?

Daddy: (Once again seeing where this is going) Every living thing dies eventually.

Fiona: Am I going to die?

Daddy: Not for a long, long time. You have a lot of life left.

Fiona: You're wrong, Daddy. I'm not going to die.

And with that she went back to eating her pasta.

I also want to note, for the record, that Fiona never seems to ask these questions to her mother, or even when her mother is around. So how come I got stuck being the theologian in the household?

Two (Not Really So) Recent Favorites

I haven't posted a new photo in a little while, and I'm not really maintaining the old photo site very well ever since Fiona started walking and talking, so here are two from recent weeks that I really like.

This one was taken up in the Berkshires in mid-June at the Berkshires Museum on a day with a bunch of activities for kids. Fiona's normally non-stop motion, but apparently some things can keep her still:

And here she is at the beach on July 4th. It wound up being not much of a beach day (note the gray skies on the horizon).

I Can Think of Some Pretty Powerful People Who Never Admitted to the First Part

Driving home today Fiona wondered aloud whether there would be a spot in front of our building (ah, the things New York children learn to wonder about).

As we approached our building, Fiona declared "there's a spot!" But as we pulled up she saw that there was, in fact, another car parked in front of our door already. And so I continued on down the street looking for a spot.

"I was wrong, Daddy."

"Yeah, but that's okay," I assured her.

"I know," she said. "Sometimes I'm wrong."

"Everybody's wrong sometimes."

"Sometimes I'm wrong. But sometimes I'm right!"

Fair enough.

Counting

We're all about counting things these days. Toy dinosaurs. Hugs. Times tossing a ball. And along the way, Fiona is figuring out a few things about numbers. Doing things ten times has become common. Doing things twenty times is a treat. Doing something more than twenty times--well, that depends on her parents' patience/availability at any given point.

She can count to twenty entirely on her own... almost. For some reason, she frequently skips over 15. But what's extra weird about that is that when she does skip over 15, her counting gets completely screwy: "11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 19, 20!" When she is prompted to put 15 after 14, she can then proceed straight through correctly "14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20!"

Where it gets exciting is to count beyond twenty. Here she needs help, but not too much. She says "27, 28, 29" (actually, we do this together, because Fiona always wants a counting partner) and then I'll say "30" and Fiona will repeat "30." And then she can start right in on "31, 32, 33." For a while she'd say something like "thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, thirty-ten," but when I'd correct her with "forty" she quickly figured out what was going on. She even told me "you never get to ten," as a way of explaining how counting works once you get into bigger numbers.

We go all the way up to 100, and when she asks to do more I announce that "100 is a pretty big number!" Once she figures out that the numbers repeat after 100 we'll be counting to 200, 300 and beyond, and there is a limit to the excitement I can feign for counting. But we did count to 100 four different times on the walk to the playground this weekend, not to mention all the times I got ten hugs and ten kisses before saying good-bye or good night.