Four years ago today

It is October, which brings with it birthdays and car accidents.

Jen got rear-ended coming home from doing some last minute shopping for Lily's party. She was hit by some random idiot who "just looked down for a second", which is word-for-word, the same explanation used by the last random idiot who hit her five years ago. Jen is reasonably certain that he was talking or texting when he hit her, though she doesn't have any proof.

Fortunately was the only one in the car when she got hit and it's still drivable, though initial estimates place the damage at greater than the value of the car. She was also packed for a show, and lost a bunch of her eggs. She's fine, but this is Lily's birthday weekend, and thus a bad time for this to happen and we'll probably be down to one car for a while, but things could have turned out a lot worse. From Jen's description, the expensive BMW that hit her crumpled like tin foil from the impact.

Her car was driven into the one in front of hers, but her airbag didn't deploy, which is good, because they can sometimes hurt smaller people when they go off.

My main concern is the insurance. The car is drivable in the short term, but it will need to be repaired or replaced eventually and State Farm moved exceedingly slowly the last time, taking almost an entire year to get the check to us., though I think the big problem last time is that the guy who hit her then didn't have any insurance and was using a borrowed car, so that made recovery difficult. More on this as it develops.

Lily has a little underwater seascape for her wallpaper, just a little strip of it running around the room at about 3/4 up the wall. We were holding hands and telling funny stories. Lily gets Highlights magazine and there's a little feature called "What's Wrong?", where you have to identify unusual features in a picture, like space aliens at a picnic, or a knight diving into a swimming pool. Lily really likes that, so Jen started a game where she and Lily tell stories like that about her wallpaper. Lily looked at the dolphin and said "Oh, I have a good one! The dolphin there is a real dolphin! But when people ask him if he's real, he tells them that he's pretend."

And I thought, okay there, Zhuangzi.

"Am I a dolphin or am I a dolphin dreaming I am a dolphin?"

She was excited and had trouble sleeping the night before her party, so I asked her which comic book she wanted to read. (She really liked the Tiny Titans book she got as a favor from Eric's party, so I picked up a couple more when I found them cheap.)

Lily: I don't like comic books.
Me: Then why do you ask me to read them?
Lily: Because I know you like reading comic books
Me: Aha! Then why do you ask mommy to read them to you?

She had no answer for that, and I think she was just trying to delay bedtime. I felt good about being able to outsmart her, but she was only three when I did that, and now that she's turned four today, I think I'm going to have trouble outwitting her.

We were looking at Halloween decorations around the house and we saw a little chipped Halloween mug and Lily commented, "It's Chip's Halloween costume!" (Chip was the chipped little teacup in Beauty and the Beast.)

Her party was pretty nice. Jen bought way too much food. I also tell her that she's buying too much food, and she always does it anyway. I'll be eating Eggo waffles for lunch for the next two weeks.

It was mostly family, but the little neighbor girl made it over too. Lily had a ball. She got a ton of Princess stuff and a pillow pet, which is a stuffed animal that transforms into a pillow. Lily opened it threw her arms around it and said "I love it! This is great for a vacation!"

I blinked and looked at Jen. "Is our daughter reciting ad copy?" And I've never seen a commercial for them, but I have to assume that's the case, because it's such a strangely specific thing to say.

Later on, she was playing with her Pillow pet, and said "She's such a nice pet. I don't want to hurt her." I explained that "You can rest on mommy's shoulder or daddy's tummy without hurting us, because you're gentle and we're strong. I bet pillow pets are like that." Lily nodded sagely and added. "Yeah, and also, she's just pretend."

Later on, she was showing me her princess oven which has light up Princesses. I was like "Wow! Is that magic?" She shook her head. "No, it's just batteries."

She is totally going to be the kid that spoils Santa for the rest of the class.

I had a pretty nice time at the party, in no small part due to the fact that my brother's girlfriend showed up and played Scott Pilgrim with me. It's even MORE fun with two players!

Lily was telling me about germs earlier, and she seemed to have a pretty good grasp of what to do to minimize risk, so I asked her where she had learned about it and she told me that she had seen it on Sid the Science Kid. So that's what we watched. The character design on Sid looks an awful lot the like the designs from Dinosaurs. Brian Henson involved in both, and I'm not sure if the similarity across such vastly different media is a bug or a feature

After the show was over, I asked her "What's science?" and she said "It's Cool Stuff!"

I thought that it was awesome that she thought science was cool and I mentioned this to Jen, who said, "Oh, I thought she said 'It's school stuff,'" This was easily verifiable, so I asked Lily, and turned out that she had said "It's school stuff". Ah, well. If I want to raise a good scientist, I have to set a good example by owning up to my mistakes.