Musical interludes (Anna)

I was singing to Emma at bedtime and being goofy with the tempo, pitch, etc. She kept squealing, "Too fast! Too slow! Too high! Too low!" I half expected her to say "No, Mumma. Wrong key!" or "Your embouchure is all wrong."

Paragraph function (Anna)

For some reason, I can no longer make paragraph breaks in my posts. The program is just lumping everything together in one long, winding paragraph. Not happy!

Gone (Anna)

Emma just called us from bed (where we had thought, quite naively, that she had been angelically sleeping), and when I went up to check on her, I found her stark naked. "Where's your nappy, kiddo?" says I. "I had a pee in nappy, so took it off," says she. She had taken her nappy off by herself and flung it over the edge of her bed. Lovely. Must say I'm quite grateful it was a pee and not a poo. Maybe that explains why she had requested no pyjamas at bed time. It's all part of her grand ploy for autonomy.

Modern kids (Anna)

We had to laugh yesterday about modern toddlers. We were looking after a random sample of three Vancouver kids for the afternoon. (Actually not random at all - Emma and two of our favourite kids.) We had them all lined up on the swings at the park and in between giggles, they started talking about planes and where they had been. Well, between the three of them, they had been to Japan, Hawaii, Turkey, Australia, England and France, as well as various places in Canada and the US. Did I mention the average age of these kids was less than three? :)

Civic responsibility (Anna)

Well, they say that civic responsibility starts early.

Our federal government has just fallen after a no confidence vote, so we're heading for another election. Caroline casually mentioned that we'll be able to vote (during the last election, we weren't Canadian citizens, and so couldn't.)

And now Emma is going around I saying "I vote, too. I wanna vote."

I'm not sure it's a good idea, though. Emma is going through a phase (an extended phase, possibly lasting another couple of decades) of saying no to everything. I mean everything. So if she was asked whether she supported a particular candidate, she would probably say "No! No no no no no."

But her other favourite expression is "I do it!" Which might get her into trouble since people could take her at her word and we could end up with the next PM on our hands. If in the US, "Yes, we can" can capture the popular imagination, then I think "I do it" could be just as successful as a rallying cry.

After all, she already has a staunch set of supporters. I have no doubt that teddy, tiny teddy, green bunny, pink bunny, Wow Wow, Boo and Baby 'Toria would all vote for her in a second.

Ah shit (Anna)

Sometimes, we don't know where Emma picks new words and phrases up. But sometimes there's no doubt. I mean, that's not a lot of ambiguity about where she learned "I go to coffee shop and work on my PhD" or "Teddy needs some space" or "Let's put some music on."

So, when Emma sits in the kitchen watching Caroline cook, saying "Ah shit" over and over again in an adorable high-pitched toddler voice, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what Caroline just let slip a few moments ago when her food started burning....

Cottages and icecreams and tigers (Anna)

We've spent the last few days at "our cottage" at Bowen Island. The weather put on a gorgeous show for us, giving us two days of sun and warmth. We had a lovely weekend of throwing rocks into the ocean, hiking, playing, watching the sunset, eating good food (thanks to our resident chef Caroline) and planning our alternative life on the island.

One evening, we were introduced to some of the more difficult aspects of Emma's new (or at least newly expressed) pretend and imaginary life.

We were pottering in the cottage and Emma was playing. She came up to us and casually said, "I have a owie on my body. I have a hurt." So we asked her what the matter was, and she said, "A honey bee came an' bit me in the ear. And it hurts."

So suddenly we're thrown into the age-old dilemma of the parent. We want to believe her, we want her to come to us when she's hurt. We want her to learn that she will be believed, and we don't want to dismiss her injuries. On the other hand, she was playing jut a few metres away from us - surely we would have seen a bee? Surely some evidence of the bee would still be visible? Surely, if nothing else, she would be crying if she had just been stung by a bee? Besides, was this something that just happened, or is she remembering something that happened months ago (although we probably would have known about it then, too)?

Luckily, she solved the dilemma for us by continuing with her story. "And then a tiger run after me and eat me, so I give a icecream cone to the tiger. And I sing a lullaby to tiger."

And since we were even more sure that there was no tiger in the cottage than we were that there was no bee, we were off the hook. This time.

And a note for those postmodernists among you. We get that what she was saying was "true on some level". We realise that truth is not a fixed, definable quality. We couldn't agree more that the world of the imagination is far more real and substantial than most of the made-up stuff that happens in 'reality'. We would be the first to argue that "stories"and fiction are often the most pure form of truth. However, that line of thinking really isn't very reassuring as a parent. I mean, at some point you just need to know if your kid has just been stung by a bee!