When we brought the Boy home, the Girl was eager to begin helping. Granted, she's always interested in helping--in name, anyway--but a baby brother is especially tempting. So we did the logical: we put her on pacifier duty.
the girl
The Dress
Before our wedding, K and I took ballroom dancing course classes. We learned all sorts of moves we’ve now forgotten — rumba, English waltz, Foxtrot, cha-cha, tango, and a few others. We focused especially on the waltz, for newly wedded couples are expected to have the first dance at their wedding party, and it is always a waltz. We learned some fancy steps, some turns, twirls, and all sorts of things to make us look like we knew what we were doing.
And then K chose a dress that restricted her shoulder movement, allowing her to raise her hands to just below her shoulders. Out went all the fancy moves.
In, however, came the possibility of the smiles when K suggests to L that she try on the dress.
“Your wedding dress?” she asked incredulously.
In doing so, K created a new metric of growth and, if we remember, a new tradition.
“We can have you try this on every year to see how you grow,” K suggested.
Still, perhaps once is enough: seeing my little girl in a wedding dress, no matter how ill-fitting the dress and how innocent the poses, was a bit stressful to a father.
Double Duty
“Can you read to me?” is a common refrain.
With two now, that means doubling up sometimes.
Tummy Time
As parents, we sometimes deliberately subject our children to discomfort, frustration, and anger. For the Boy, that occurs several times daily, and the Girl has named this torture “Tummy Time.”
“You have to exercise those neck muscles,” she explains as we did so often before. For the Girl, though, it’s more than simple entertainment: it’s a brief glimpse into her own infancy.
Perhaps that’s why she’s so keen to watch each and every time. She comes running from wherever she might be when she hears, “Okay, little man, it’s Tummy Time.”
Photo Walk
After the Boy's six o'clock feeding, nothing soothes his nerves (and K's) like a walk. Without K. Or the Girl. So the three of us head out alone, I with the Boy, the Girl with our little point and shoot camera.
It's a fairly standard route we take. Usually, the only question is direction, and in the late afternoon, the sun dictates counter-clockwise. And so we begin with the mysterious flowers that have been blooming for a week now and the daily request: "Daddy, can I pick a flower?" The bush hangs over an embankment, with thorns and danger swirling around it.
"How about a picture?" I suggest.
"Okay," she chirps, then explains that today, she's going to focus on pictures of nature.
Yet when we get home, we see that there was another motif that crept its way steadily into the eighty-some pictures she snapped along the half-hour walk: the road.
Endless pictures of the road. The road and the grass beside; the road and our feet; the road and her foot; the road with crumbling asphalt; the road with new asphalt; the road without lines; the road with lines.
"Why so many pictures of the road?" I want to ask, but I know the answer. "I don't know."
I remember taking pictures that way: not really sure why I was taking that particular picture, but somehow certain that the photo would reveal something not immediately observable in reality.
After all, isn't that the motivation behind most modern art? If Marcel Duchamp can display a signed urinal as modern art, isn't a food processor on the side of the road at least as deserving of artistic attention?
Surely, at the very least, a dog's urinal is art.
Afternoon with Big Sister
I put the Boy on a small sleeping bag the Girl has spread out in front of her doll house. As often happens, things turn photogenic.
Waking Up
“Let’s go wake up Big Sister,” I say to the Boy as he fusses this morning.
Soon, everyone is smiling.
Knight Study
"Daddy, can we play chess?" the Girl asks almost daily now. She's learning -- slow steps -- but her enjoyment of the game is most gratifying. Today: knight study.
"Put a pawn at each square this knight is attacking," I say. She forms the circular pattern around the knight.
"Notice," I continue, "that the knight is on a white square but is attacking all black squares." I hope this will help her complete the exercise, but we end up getting pawns on random black squares in a few moments.
I suppose the next lesson -- moving the knight to the edge of the board to show how its power is effectively halved in doing so, proving the old adage, "A knight on the rim is grim" -- will have to wait.
Fascination
It’s a good sign: the Girl is utterly fascinated with the Boy. “I want to hold him!” is a common refrain. “That’s so cute!” is a frequent chorus.
The question is, how long will it last?
Swimming and Resting
We’ve come a long way in the last couple of years. The Girl swims; the Boy is; and I’m still expanding.
