Happy Halloween 2008

A few weeks ago I asked Fiona if she likes Halloween better than Christmas. Her instant reply: "Yes."

Voting Letdown

Andrea voted earlier yesterday afternoon and took Fiona to the early voting station (where they had to spend 90 minutes in line, which may look like enthusiasm to you but sounds inexcusable to me when you're talking about something so fundamental).

Anyway, Fiona apparently did very well playing with Mommy's iPhone while the line crawled. There was one moment of letdown, however: Fiona assumed that when you vote you actually get to see the candidates and so she was disappointed to discover that John McCain and Barack Obama were not waiting by the booth.

This being a swing state, I'd almost expect to see them there myself.

Good Ear

She's got plenty of musical talent in her family, so we've gotten used to Fiona being able to pick up a tune quickly. But now it looks like she has an even sharper ear than we thought:

One of her relatives taught her the "Doe, a deer" song (actually called Do-Re-Mi) from The Sound of Music and Fiona loves singing it. So, since we live in an iTunes age, I overcame my distaste for all things Sound of Music and downloaded the song for Fiona to hear.

At first, Fiona was thrilled to hear the whole thing, since she just knows the verse that everybody knows (going up the scale). Then she started to listen closer as the song continued and turned to her parents:

"Is that Mary Poppins singing?"

Our jaws dropped.

By the way, she's only seen Mary Poppins once and that was 4-5 months ago.

It Wasn't a Sentence That Would Have Occurred to Me

Reading a book with Fiona this evening (and, yes, she's coming along very quickly on the reading), we spent some time lingering over the back cover which lists the various levels of books available from the publisher.

There's Pre-Reading, for kids who are just starting to recognize basic words. Then there's level one (which this book was), for kids who know basic words, can sound out some others, and can handle simple sentences.

"What's two?" Fiona asked, pointing to that level.

I read the description. It's for kids with a larger vocabulary who can handle more complicated sentences.

"Like: May I please go to a wedding so I can get married?" Fiona asked. "Is that a complicated sentence?"

Um... I guess.

Moolah

OK, enough politics.

Earlier this week Fiona was offering her usual resistance to going to preschool -- or, more accurately, her usual resistance to having to get ready to go to preschool (once she's there she's always happy). She announced she wanted to stay home.

"You can't stay home," I told her.

"Why?"

"Because I have to work."

"Why do you have to work?" Have I mentioned that we're in the why phase? Why do we need trees, why do we need animals, why do we need to breathe, why do we need to exist (I love it when preschoolers start verging on profound and unanswerable philosophical questions).

"I work so we can have money," I replied. She's heard this bit before. "Do you like having a house? Do you like having clothes? We need money for those."

"I have money," Fiona insisted. "In my piggy bank. I have lots of money. We can use that and you won't have to work."

Ah, for the days when a big pile of nickels and pennies seemed like it would be enough to last for years.

Vice Presidential Politics

A few days after the below, Fiona announced apropos of nothing (she was eating yogurt at the time and watching Dora):

"I'm going to be president when I'm older because I'm really smart."

Fiona doesn't lack for self confidence. We nodded and told her she could do that. 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling and all that.

"Barack Obama and John McCain are boys, but some presidents are girls," Fiona declared.

Well, here we were getting into one of those areas. We never give Fiona any of those books assuring her that girls can do anything, because it seems foolish to even plant the idea that some people think there are things that girls can't do. As far as Fiona is concerned, girls can do anything -- there's no question. We broke the news:

"Actually, there's never been a woman president," we said. "But there will be."

"I'm going to be the first because I'm really smart."

A few minutes later she saw a picture of Sarah Palin in the paper and asked who that was.

"That's John McCain's running mate," Andrea told her.

"She's running for president?"

"She's running for vice president. That's the #2 job."

"I want her to be president."

Our knee jerk liberal reflexes activated, though we tried to keep them in check.

"Why?"

"She's pretty." Fiona was getting at the crux of her appeal.

"You shouldn't want somebody to be president just because she's pretty. You should want somebody who's smart."

"That lady's not smart?"

When your kid is born you think to yourself that you're not going to force your ideology on her, that she should grow into her own opinions and you won't tell her what to think. On the other hand, the Couric interviews had been all over the TV, and surely this couldn't be a debatable point except among the lost-to-Hannity crowd. What to do?

"No," we replied. "She's not smart."

Presidential Politics

Fiona's very aware that a presidential election is going on. She likes to point to pictures of Barack Obama and John McCain in the newspaper. But getting her head around what's really going on is a bit beyond a four year-old (sorry, four-and-a-half).

Recently she saw an Obama bumper sticker lying around the house (no, it's not on the car) and asked what it said. When I told her, she asked if I was voting for Barack Obama. I said I was.

Fiona likes to think that her parents always believe the exact opposite of one another (I guess part of her inclination toward drama includes a taste for conflict). So she announced "Mommy's voting for John McCain."

Andrea happened to be walking past at this exact moment and stopped in her tracks with a shocked "what?!?!"

It probably came out a little more forcefully than intended, since it startled Fiona. I explained to her that almost everybody in her family was voting for Obama. She started asking about each member of the family, including pets. She decided that Tia and Tio's dog Buddy was voting for McCain, although the other dogs in the family are all voting Obama.

A little later, it occurred to Fiona to ask why we were voting for Obama. Now, this presented me with something of a conundrum. I mean, how do you even say something as simple as "I like his economic policies better" to a child who literally (not Joe Biden literally, but literally literally) doesn't have a concept of money beyond stuff that goes in her piggy bank or gets given to people at the cash register (when we played "toy store" last weekend she charged me $5 for a doll and $200 million for a book).

So I decided to go with health care. "Barack Obama wants to make it easier for everybody to see a doctor if they get sick."

Fiona understood that, and it sounded like a good idea to her. But then she thought about what that implied:

"John McCain doesn't want you to see the doctor?" she asked.

Well...

"He must not like going to the doctor. I like going to the doctor. I'm very brave."

There you have it: health care policy for the preschool set.