Do you want to summon shoggoths?

Maybe about six months ago, Lily was looking through my collection of Munchkin cards, because the art is a combination of creepy and cute that really appeals to her. She would occasionally ask questions if she didn't understand what was going on with a card.

She asked what an Elder Sign was. She understood that there was a joke here, but she didn't quite get what it was. I explained an Elder Sign as a kind of a symbol that keeps certain monsters away. In the absence of such a rune, the guy was just using a sign with "Elder" written on it to smack some monsters.

She thought that this was just about the funniest thing she had ever seen. She wants to share this joke with everyone, because she's certain that they'll find it just as funny as she does.

She was talking to my stepmother, and began the conversation with "You know what an Elder Sign is, right?", because she just assumed that adults all sit around discussing this kind of thing when kids aren't around.

I recounted this all on Facebook, and my friend/Cthulhu GM Eric offered "Do you want to summon shoggoths" (sung to the tune of "Do you want to build a snowman?" from Frozen) in the comments. He later expanded it to a post in his own blog, and I'm linking to it, because, like Cthulhu Munchkin and Eric himself, it's the perfect combination of creepy and cute.

How the Josh stole Christmas

Pictured: Me

Just when we thought we were in the clear, Lily had starting expressing serious doubts about Santa, after Christmas last year.  We deflected the questions as best we could, and they became less frequent as the season ended.

In the post just before this one, I discussed how Lily is very good at solving a problem, looking at a scene to see what doesn't fit. I suppose, in light of that, that something like this was inevitable.

I came in from another room, to find Lily sitting on the floor, looking very serious. That, in itself, is not especially remarkable, as she's the kind of kid who takes everything seriously. She asked me, "Daddy, will you always tell me the truth?"

I said, "I always try to tell you the truth. The only exception is if someone has asked me to keep their secret, and in that case, I'll tell you that I can't tell you, because I'd be breaking a promise to someone else."

I don't think that preamble was premeditated, but it did have the effect of limiting my range of response.

And then she asked "Is Santa Claus really real or are parents just tricking kids?"

Oh boy.

I didn't answer, and she went on, "I've been thinking about it and I think there's only a one in ten chance that Santa Claus is real."

I won't bore you with a blow-by-blow, because none of the people reading this are, as far as I know, hardcore masochists. It was brutal.

Do you remember in the final Harry Potter book, where Snape is trying to get more information from Narcissa and Bellatrix by acting like he really already knows it? He's shifty as hell, and gives these ambiguous half-answers that practically beg for some clarifying follow up questions. I remember thinking at the time that his act would fool a clever seven-year old, and today I have proof.

I would evade, she would come back. If I were ambiguous, she would ask for a clarification. If I asked her what she thought, she would repeat the question, "Daddy, is Santa real or are parents just tricking kids?" "Daddy, do you believe in Santa?" "I believe in the spirit of Santa" "You didn't answer the question."  It was like being interrogated by Inspector Javert. I felt like Kyle Reece in the Terminator. She had one question and she absolutely would not stop until she got her answer.

Once she did get her answer, she had a follow up. WHY do parents trick their kids? There was an interlude of wailing and gnashing of teeth and "I hate Christmas, I hate Santa, I hate all parents who lie to their kids! Everyone who learns about Santa turns into a monster!" It was rough. She wasn't upset that Santa wasn't real; she was upset because we had lied to her.

I tried to explain that sometimes it's okay to keep information from people. I tried to use Mommy's surprise party as an example, that it wouldn't have been as fun if she had known about it ahead of time, but this was getting into really touchy territory.

I'm not Immanuel Kant, who believed there was a categorical imperative against lying, but I didn't want to tell my daughter that it's okay to lie in the service of the greater good, either, because I don't feel like jumping off that particular slippery slope today.

Follow up to the Allentown Comic Con: The Good, the Bad and the Weird

There are three companion stories to our time at the Allentown Comic Con, one about Lily being good, one about Lily being bad, and one about a very weird coincidence.

The Weird: I'll open with the coincidence. It's the internet age, and I know several people I consider friends, but who I have never met in real life. After I wrote about the con, one of the folks I've never met in person and probably never will happened to see the post and mentioned that he'd been at the con and caught the same wedding there. We were in the same room together, probably no more than ten or twenty feet away. Weird. I had no idea that he was even local. Of course, we're only aware of such coincidences when they happen. For every time when you get a phone call from your mom when you're thinking of her, there are thousands of times when you're thinking of her and she doesn't call. We only see the hits. The misses are invisible to us. 

The Bad: We almost didn't make it to the con at all. As we were getting ready, Jen was putting on her Buffy costume and Lily threw a fit because "Buffy doesn't wear that much blush!" It really escalated and she got completely bent out of shape about it.

I tried to turn the whole thing into a teachable moment. I tried to explain that other people are going to make decisions that she isn't going to like, but the freedom to make decisions includes the freedom to make bad decisions, and it isn't her choice on how much blush mommy wears as part of a costume. (And it's not like it was an excessive amount either, but that's hardly the point.)

She got over it, eventually, and we went to the con, where we had a happy moment. Most of the people reading this far will have already read about this on Facebook, but I'll repeat it here.

The Good: When we were in the shopping mall housing the con, some motion caught my eye and I saw that someone had dropped something. When I looked closer, I saw that it was a pile of cash, but I couldn't see who had dropped it. So I kept my eyes peeled, and caught the next time money fell, presumably from the same person.

So Lily and I ran her down and asked if she had dropped it, and she checked and saw it must have fallen from a bank envelope that had become turned upside down while she was carrying it. She looked ready to cry as she gave me a hug and told me that was all her money in the world.

It's always a good feeling knowing you've done something good, but it's extra nice doing it with your daughter and superheroes. Let's hope that if Lily maintains an interest in superheroes as she gets older, we can set an example that says that sometimes the most "heroic" thing you can do for someone is to perform a small kindness that they can't do themselves. It wasn't my intent to set a good example for Lily, but I'm glad I could. I hope the lesson she takes from this is that helping people isn't remarkable, but just something one does when presented with the opportunity.The only remarkable thing about it was that I was lucky enough to see the second set of bills fall, as it's difficult to determine ownership of money. ("Excuse me, ma'am, do you recognize this money?" "Oh, yes, that's mine. It has George Washington on it, just like mine!") 

Anti-Lily

Apparently I exhausted my stockpile of interesting posts during April.

I gave my old smartphone to Lily when I upgraded earlier in the year, and she bedazzled it and started using it as a camera and a music player.

Recently, the camera function has started behaving oddly. I took the picture below earlier today, and holy Christ, it's rather unnerving. I think the camera pierces the veil between our universe and the anti-matter mirror universe.

Here's a picture of Counter-Lily, who listens to her parents and eats her anti-matter vegetables.

Unnatural Creatures of Unspeakable Evil

I had an idea for a post and I was doing a little reading up for it while I was eating my breakfast. (The post will be "Could a Beholder take a Dalek?" if you're curious)

I was flipping through the book when Lily came rocketing down the stairs. "What are you reading?" she asked.

I showed her the back cover.

"Oh!" She said "Unnatural Creatures of Unspeakable Evil! Can I see?"

"Um, no. You're six years old." I put the book on the far side of the table.

Lily reached over and opened the book. "Oh! I like this picture!" (A mind flayer Elder Brain) "That looks weird!" (Gibbering mouther), "That looks cute!" (Hound of the gloom)

I took the book back. "It's cute now, but it's not going to seem cute at bedtime."

She sulked a little bit, but I think it's funny that I'm raising a kid who's first reaction to "Unnatural Creatures of Unspeakable Evil" is "Oh, can I see?"

Video Games, Princesses and Kittens

Lily started kindergarten on Monday. It's not as big a deal as I thought it would be, because it mirrors the experience she had with pre-K so closely. They had half days the first two days, so she was already back when I called on my lunch break. There's nothing of the baby left in how she speaks. She talks like a little adult. We discussed her day and when she was done talking she said, "I'm going to give the phone back to Mommy now so I can do my homework. Bye! I love you."

We went to a party for her little cousin on Saturday, and we wandered away to a nearby park after a while. I had my t-shirt that says, "You read my t-shirt. That's enough social interaction for one day" and she looked at it and said, "You read," pronouncing it "reed" "my t-shirt," then paused and corrected herself, "No. You read," red, "my t-shirt."

She's very good with context like that. Occasionally she'll read whole sentences in her head before saying them out loud in order to get the correct pronunciation of homophones. So, based on how they're used, she can tell the difference between "live" and "live" and "tomato" and "tomato".


 I snapped a couple pictures of her reading old collections of Peanuts comics. I think these are becoming some of my favorite pictures of her. The books were mine when I was kid. I asked her if she would be interested in them, she accepted one, looked at the back cover, asked of Linus, "Where's his blanket?" and read for more than twenty minutes.



 We had to interrupt her so we could read her some bedtime stories and get her to sleep. This is the first time I've encountered this, but Jen, who drives Lily around more than I do, says that if Lily is enjoying a book on a car ride, she'll get so quiet that Jen will sometimes forget she's back there.

I'd like to take some of the credit for this. (Along with Jen, of course.) We try to be good parents and answer her questions. While we were taking a walk in the park, she asked if it would be possible to drill a hole in the center of the earth and come out the other side. I explained that the center of the earth was very hot and under a great deal of pressure, so it wouldn't be possible to do it. (Despite what the Total Recall remake would have you believe.) She then asked if it would be possible to drill beneath the surface, but go around the core of the earth. I told that we haven't drilled very far into the earth at all, but it might be possible in the future. I also suggested that we take a look at the Illustrated Atlas of the Universe, which has a cross section of the Earth.

We did this when we got home. I'm pleased that I remembered to follow through, because I like it when she looks at those kind of books and it made me feel like a good dad to have remembered.

Later on that day, it made me feel like a bad dad when she threw a fit when we wouldn't give her another hour of cartoons. There was much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments and it was very disturbing to hear my five-year-old daughter insisting she "needed" another hour of cartoons. Not wanted. Needed!!! She sounded like nothing so much as an unrepentant heroin addict.

But we got over that. She's a good kid. Mostly. I was mildly mortified to see that she listed her three favorite things for her teacher as video games, princesses and kittens, but Jen thinks that she only listed the first one because we do place time limits and close supervision on her video game time.

We had an initial meeting/orientation with her teacher and the classroom aide. Lily is already making a name for herself. Her spelling is very good for her age. (She spelled "my" for them "M-I", paused, said, "no, that's not right. M-Y", and black. She knows a lot of sight words, which is their term for words that are difficult to spell just by sounding them out.)

I tend to be very binary in my passions. Either I don't care at all or IT'S THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD!! Lily is the same way, but she's five, so hopefully she'll grow out of it. An assignment on Tuesday was for the kids to draw a picture of themselves. Lily started a picture of herself, but gave herself too much hair, and she freaked out. It was ruined! And they told her maybe that she could make the hair into a ponytail, which is something we try to when she makes a mistake, incorporate the mistake into the picture. But, no, it was ruined. If she were at home, she probably would have ripped the picture in half, but I'm pleased she had the wherewithal to control herself in school. (Though if she's capable of such a feat, I'd like her to exercise it at home when she's frustrated at home too.) The word they used to describe her was paralyzed, and I can imagine it. She had tears streaming down her cheeks and just had no idea how to fix this. The teacher wouldn't give her another sheet of paper, which was absolutely the right move, but did allow her to draw a new picture on the other side. Lily worked all the way through free play, getting her picture just so.

And I'm torn. Wanting to do the best job you can do is certainly an admirable trait and one we want to encourage, but perfectionism can be a negative if taken to extremes. I've come to terms with my own issues in that regard, though it took me a lot of effort, but I'm managed to make my foibles work for me. I'm outside my area of expertise, but this excerpt from the Wikipedia entry on perfectionism summarizes my concerns: "Normal perfectionists pursue perfection without compromising their self-esteem, and derive pleasure from their efforts. Neurotic perfectionists strive for unrealistic goals and consistently feel dissatisfied when they cannot reach them."  I'm afraid Lily's perfectionism might be closer to the neurotic kind. I want her to be the best version of herself she can be, but I don't want her to destroy herself by adopting a "perfect or useless" dichotomy.

I was concerned that she would be bored at school. This was going to be her third years being taught her ABCs, and while I don't think she's a prodigy of any kind, I know she's a smart little kid who reads to herself, adds negative numbers and asks questions like "Who was Sun-Tzu?", and, as she missed the the cut off date by about 72 hours, I do remain very unhappy that she's not getting as much as she could from school. I've mentioned this before, but I still have the concern that she'll be bored by school and this will poison her impression of it for years to come. However, I'm somewhat mollified after meeting Lily's teacher and talking about her with a friend who works at the school and who speaks extremely highly of her.

She hasn't made any friends yet, though her friend last year is in the room across the hall and they see each other during the day. That's probably a good thing. She is one of those kids who gravitates towards adults and I'm happy that she's challenged to socialize outside of her comfort zone.

Lily's First Convention: The Great Allentown Comic Con

I used to work at a comic book store and when I talk about this time, I usually describe it as "a few years ago", but it was really almost a decade and a half by now. Sed fugit interea fugit irreparabile tempus, singula dum capti circumvectamur amore.

Despite this, I've stayed on good terms with my old boss and he mentioned on Facebook that there would be a comic book convention up in Allentown, and further, Scott Hanna would be holding a panel and then auctioning off some of his art for charity. That last part didn't surprise me. I had only met Scott a couple times, but he always impressed me as one of the most authentically nice people I've ever met.

Lily had talked about going to a comic convention, so I decided to take her up to this one. We talked about costumes and looked at the Superheroes are for girls, too!, Tumblr for inspirations, but we decided to go in normal clothes after all. I thought that her cousin might want to go too, so we grabbed him and went on up. Not a lot of people dressed up anyway, though there were a few neat ones. My favorite had to be Wolverine in his civilian clothes, which was just a guy who needed a shave in jeans and wife beater with his hair moussed up like Wolverine.

At least I think that was a costume.

Honorable mention goes to a kid who looked a little younger than Lily, in full Captain America getup. I think he was supposed to be pre-Super solider Cap.

I sometimes make it sound like I'm the father to the best-behaved child on earth, but she is not infrequently impatient and bratty. This was one of those days. We ran into a family we knew almost as soon as we entered the door, and as we were walking to area where the convention was being held (it was in a room in an indoor mall), we passed a little snack bar with an ice cream freezer right out in front.

So Lily was obsessed with ice cream. We got me a wristband and walked around the con for a few minutes, but she kept pestering me about it, so finally relented, because nobody was going to have any fun until she got it. So I bought it for her and then we returned to the con, and not five minutes later Lily was asking when she could have some bubble gum.

The last convention I had attended was I-Con about four years back. It was held on the campus of Stoney Brook University and bigger in scale and broader in scope, covering sci-fi, anime, cosplay, role-playing and pretty much any aspect of geek culture you'd care to name. This was limited to a couple rooms and almost entirely comics, except for a couple genre celebrities. The big one was Jeremy Bulloch, who had been Boba Fett in Empire and Jedi.

There were a couple comics creators promoting properties I had never heard of. It must be tough way of making a living. My wife has been making natural dyed eggs and selling them at craft shows since she was a child, and she enjoys the creative aspect of it much more than the part that actually makes her money. I suspect the same dynamic is at work here. I like writing and it's a creative outlet for me, but even if I had the talent for it, I don't think I'd want to make a career out of it, because the actual creation is such a small part of the process, and I think the hard work of sales, and the rejection would sour me on the whole thing very quickly. 

Lily bought a light switch cover from a woman who makes them. She picked out the Justice League one. Here's a link to the woman's Etsy store, because she does nice work.

We also picked up some dollar comics and a discounted Avatar trade paperback and we also saw a statue of Raven from the Teen Titans comics, and I pointed it out to Lily, who loved the character as she was depicted in the cartoon, but she said "That can't be Raven. She's not mopey enough." Heh.

We walked around for a little bit more, but Lily was getting extremely antsy and still whining about the gum, so we made an early exit. Overall, it could have turned out a bit better, but I don't regret going.On the way out, she looked at the con logo and said, "Those silhouettes look like Fred and Daphne as superheroes," you know, I can kind of see that.

Brave, the Postal Service and the Pareto Principle

I saw Brave on Saturday and I liked it, but not as much as I thought I would.

And now, I'm going to talk about the Post Office and the 80/20 rule. (Don't worry, it ties back to Brave!)

One of the weirdest things about living in 2012 is how much vitriol aspects of our society that were well-respected in my childhood now draw from certain aspects of Conservative culture.

A big one is the Postal Service. It's almost axiomatic among some folks that the USPS is bad, bloated and inefficient. The critics of the postal service point to UPS and Fedex to show how private industry can make a buck and do a better job providing a necessary service. (And those of us who don't mind the Postal Service point out that the troubles facing the USPS are artificial, as the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA),  obligated the USPS to fund 75-years worth of future health care benefit payments to retirees within a ten-year time span – a requirement to which no other government organization is subject.)

Then one of both or us changes the subject because nobody is going to back down and no one wants to ruin a friendship over the Postal Service*. And now I'm going to engage in even more digression in the service of my original point. My old boss was huge into the the Pareto principle, a guideline that says, in many things and across many fields, 80% of results come from only 20% of the causes.

As the USPS is mandated to accept and deliver any package or letter that meets their guidelines, private carriers often exploit this, as part of the Post Office's Last Mile service, where they ship a package to a local post office and the local post office does the nitty gritty hard work of making sure it gets to the recipient.

So what does this have to do with Brave? FedEx and UPS are only profitable because they exist in a world with the USPS. The Postal Service is obligated to do the hard work and the private carriers are free to focus on the 20% that provides 80% of the profit.

And we're almost to the actual movie review.

Lily usually gets along with me better than she does with Jen. I don't think that I'm giving away any secrets by saying that. There are a couple of reasons for that. I tend to avoid confrontation in personal issues, so Jen more often plays the role of the disciplinarian, and when I do have to step in, I tend to be more circumspect, because if there's anything I hate more than someone yelling at me, it's me having to yell at someone.

To put it another way, I give her what she wants, and Jen gives her what she needs. And I don't want to imply that I'll let her get away with anything. Jen and I have similar values, but Jen's threshold is lower down on the continuum than mine, so if we're both present when Lily is being naughty, Jen will reach the point where she'll intervene before I will almost every time.

And I realize that like the relationship between FedEx and the Postal Service, the relationship I have with Lily is only possible because of the relationship Jen has with her. It only exists in the shadow of that relationship. And I do a great many worthwhile things with Lily. We read and we learn and we go for walks. But I understand that Jen is the better parent, and she does the hard work and I try to stress this to Lily. And maybe someday she'll come back to this post and she'll understand it in a way that she can't now.

So, why do I bring this up? Because there is a similar dynamic at work in Brave. Merrida is the hero of the piece.

Or the protagonist, at least.

Her dad is king Fergus and he loves her and indulges her in everything, including activities not traditionally suited for a princess of her station.

Her mom is Queen Elinor, who does the hard work of running the kingdom and raising their daughter.

It's the second part that's the hard one. A big part of adulthood is accepting that you're going to spend a lot of time doing things you don't want to do. And no one wants to tell their kid that the world will disappoint them and that they need to compromise, and teaching that lesson may be even harder than learning it.

There was a scene in the beginning of the movie, when the royal family was out having a picnic and the demon bear Mor'du attacked. And Fergus got right between the bear and his family, and even though his weapons shattered against it, he was going to fight this bear empty-handed if that's what it took to protect them.

Fergus was ready to die to protect Merrida, but Elinor has the harder job, because she's willing to weather the scorn and anger of the person she loves most in the world in order to prepare her to face the world.

And I do like the movie. It's a Pixar movie, after all, and except for movies about cars, they have yet to make a bad movie. Part of my disappointment is that Merrida is so bratty!  The mannerisms were top notch. I recognized every eye roll and every sigh from my own occasionally bratty kid.

I liked the conflict between Elinor and Merrida, because they both have a reasonable point of view and they both love each other. It seemed real and compelling, but it was subsumed by events of the second act, and the second act went on entirely too long. However, the climax was so good that I'm willing to forgive it.


*Unless we're talking about the band of the same name, because they're awesome and I don't care what Tim says.

Where Do Babies Come From?

Most only children like their setup, but Lily lives in mortal terror of ever having another sibling. And while we don't have any plan to have another kid (and I hope I didn't jinx our birth control into failing by making this statement), we're aware of her concerns, so this sometimes leads us* to making odd threats like "Clean your room or mommy's having another baby right now."

Anyway, a few days ago, I was just sitting and hanging out with Lily when she asked, "Where do babies come from?"

Now, this isn't the first time she's asked such a question.

Shortly before she turned three, she asked "How do we make new people?" We knew that we'd be getting something like this eventually, eventually, but we thought it would come in a more traditional fashion.

Then we had this conversation when she was still four.

Lily: I was worried that I might fall through the toilet and get stuck in the pipes.
Me: No, you're too big. The worst that might happen is that you'd get a little wet.
Lily: What if I was a baby? Would I be small enough to get stuck in the pipes then?
Me: No, even babies are too big to get stuck by the time they are born.
Lily: What about little babies before the daddy puts them in the mommy? Are they small enough to get stuck then?
Me: *blink* ...I am not ready to have this conversation now.

Up until now, we've always been able to answer these questions to her satisfaction by saying, "From their mommy's tummy," and then answering the follow up "How do they get there?" with "Their daddy puts them there."

But this time she pressed further, and I'm pleased that she has the acumen to see a deflection for what it is, and the intellectual wherewithal to push back against it.  I think that kind of persistence will serve her well in later life. Now, however, it puts us in an awkward situation.

I want to be able to answer all of her questions, and I think she's capable of understanding an abridged version of the reproductive process. She's a good kid, she's a smart kid, but unfortunately, she's also a social kid and I'm sure that the information won't stop with her and we're not sure we want to be the parents of a Pre-K Doctor Spock who shows and tells the most instructive things during show and tell.

So, I'm opening the floor to suggestions. Does anyone have any recommendations?


*And by "us", I of course mean, "me".

Top o' the mornin' to ya

There's a definite hierarchy to holidays. The top tier is Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter. The big ones. You don't have to go to work, and you still get paid but the Post Office doesn't deliver any mail. Right behind those are Halloween, Valentine's Day, Father's Day, important celebrations, to be sure, but not the kind of thing a kid gets herself worked up about weeks in advance. Beyond those are the holidays-in-name-only that I got off when I worked for the County, Flag Day, Arbor Day, St Swithin's Day, etc.

By all rights, Saint Patrick's Day belongs in the bottom tier, but Lily promoted it right to the top. I don't know what it is, but she's been asking about it for weeks. She woke up, wished us a "Top o' the mornin'!" and was generally as excited about it as every conversation since Valentine's Day had led us to believe.

I liked Gaelic Culture a lot when I was growing up, and I've found a lot of geeks do. It's different enough to be exotic, but not so much to be inaccessible. Part of was my lifelong interest in mythology and another part of it is my love of the works of Roger Zelazny, who drew on the myths to write some of his best known books.

(Another component is that I really like the color green. Not that I wear it all the time or anything, but I like seeing it around. It's just kind of a low level of happiness. It's kind of like baseball for me. I never really followed baseball, but I lived in Philly for a while and still have a level of goodwill towards the Phillies. I still listen to the Philadelphia NPR station and they would report the scores for the previous night's games during my morning commute and it would make me vaguely happy if I heard the Phillies won. Seeing people in green is like that. Just a small amount of happiness, but the cumulative effect is pretty impressive on Saint Patrick's Day.)

On Saturday, we went to Bethlehem's second annual Parade of Shamrocks.  We got there early and I took a couple pictures of Lily, but she's going through a phase where she either turns away or makes a face whenever she notices a camera on her. It's like photographing Bart Simpson.

If you're thinking, "It looks like she's pooping," that's not an accident. She described this as her "pooping face" and this picture is definitely coming out on prom night.

The parade itself was a bit underwhelming. There were just a bunch of things that didn't seem to belong in a Saint Patrick's Day parade. I can almost forgive the three dozen or so cars plugging Kelly's used cars, because there's at least the nominal connection between Kelly (Green) and Saint Patrick's Day, but random people walking their dogs? What was that about?! And they weren't even Irish Setters.

And, yeah, local businesses are an important part of padding out a local parade, but when a segment concludes with a car plugging fire extinguisher training and a garbage truck, I think it's safe to say that your Saint Patrick's Day parade has lost sight of the reason for the season.

Those are my sneakers in the picture, and and they're as Irish as anything else in the shot.

Lily liked it, though and we stopped for some shamrock shakes, so I call the day a success!

That was our Saturday. On Sunday, I spent a couple hours helping my elderly grandmother with her shopping. She told a bunch of boring stories and complained about everything. It's probably what this blog sounds like if you read it out loud.

End of Year Post - Calibration

This time of year always seems a little bit surreal to me. There's a fantasy setting called Exalted where, at the end of the year, there's a week called "Calibration" that falls outside the calender, where the natural laws are suspended and anything can happen. And the week between Christmas and New Years seems like that to me.  A solid majority of the working world take most or all of the week off, you get together with people who haven't seen all year and generally do the things that you don't otherwise do. It's where we take the time to enjoy the things we've worked for all year, a time of fewer responsibilities (or at least different ones). I suppose this feeling of strangeness is exacerbated by the career change I'll be making in the New Year, and while it's more pronounced than it usually is, it's how I feel this time every year.

Christmas was nice, with a few rough patches. At the end of the day, our house was filled with dozens of new toys and the next morning Lily woke up and wanted  to spend the morning solving math problems on the back of a piece of scrap paper.  Not that I'm complaining about this, but had I be able to anticipate it, I think we could have gotten through Christmas spending much less money.

The other day, Lily was naughty before dinner and I sent her up to her room. She stomped upstairs and a few moments later I heard her angrily singing "Jingle Bells, DADDY smells!" It's the first time I ever heard anyone angrily burst into song outside of a musical.

Look at this picture and tell me what you see.

It is not in fact a Marcel Duchamp piece, but rather the aftermath of my afternoon with Lily.

We had been to a holiday party earlier in the week and one of the presents Lily had received was a "Make-Your-Own-Bouncy-Ball" kit. The instructions were to pour the crystals into the mold, then keep it submerged in warm water for two minutes. I was watching the kitchen timer, so I know that she was out of my sight for no more than that long when she wandered back into the kitchen with gum near her ear and a pair of scissors in her hand. She said, "Daddy, can you help me cut my hair?"

Lily has never had her hair cut and I knew Jen would not pleased with me if this were the circumstances of her first trimming, so I put the ball down, went to the cabinet, grabbed a jar of peanut butter and started rubbing it around on the gum. I'd like to say that I was putting my chemistry degree to use with my solution, but that's not even true. I just happened to remember this from childhood (though the chemistry background at least let me understand why it would work.)

So I got the gum out and then we shampooed her hair with Berry scented shampoo. Even though her hair smelled faintly of gum, peanut butter and strawberries, I think we would have gotten away with it, had I remembered to discard the incriminating comb by the time mommy came home.

Prelude to Thanksgiving

We had a nice week leading up to Thanksgiving. I usually skip going to church with Jen and Lily, but I'll sometimes go along for special occasions.  This past week they were singing together as part of the family choir, so I went along to see it.

While we were walking along to the church, Lily told me "You're going to love church!" It's nice to see her enthusiastic about things. I'll often ask her questions to draw out her opinions of things, so I asked her what church was all about, and she answered, "It's where we go to learn how to be kind."

I joke about Jen's UU Church (though Jen has mentioned that it annoys here, so I try not to do it as much anymore) and I'm a pretty staunch atheist, but I am happy that my daughter is attending a church that leaves her with this impression.

They sang "I'm Going to Sit at the Welcome Table" Lily varies pretty widely. Sometimes she'll be the world's biggest ham and rattle off twenty jokes to her audience, and other times she'll hide behind me or Jen and tell us in sentence fragments that she wants us to do her talking. Luckily we got gregarious Lily for this performance.

On Tuesday we went to the little feast they were having at her class. It was pretty nice, if unfortunately named. (Jen mentioned that she can't help but think "And in the master's chambers/They gathered for the feast./The stab it with their steely knives/ But they just can't kill the beast.")

It's always interesting to see her interacting with her cohorts. I try to fade into the background because it's just a glimpse into her world that I so seldom get to see. She had one little boy laughing at everything she said. It was very cute.

Wednesday was less good. She was going to go see Happy Feet 2 with her great grandmother, and Jen had the foresight to think that she might be upset when Great Nanny would take her to the movie without me. The last thing we wanted her to say was  “But I don’t want to go with Nanny to the stupid movie!” in front of her.

Well, I spent ten minutes bribing/reassuring/comforting Lily when it was time to go. At first she was hysterical "I want to be with daddy," but she was mostly calmed down.  However, Nan saw that she was upset and told her that she didn't have to go.

So Nanny took off and I very gently told her that I was disappointed in her and she freaked out and started acting like the world was ending. She sulked in there for almost an hour. Every time I knocked on the door, she said, "You can't come in if you're still upset or disappointed with me."

As I kid, I always felt intensely guilty when grownups were mad at me, and it looks like Lily has the same trait. She gets over it eventually, but it's rough to see her that way.

Thanksgiving itself was almost an anticlimax. Our families are scattered all over the place, and we have potentially four meals we might attend (if we count my mom in Florida), but we just had a quiet dinner with Jen's dad's side of the family.

Lily saw Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for the first time. I hadn't watched it in ages. I'd forgotten how long it really takes to get rolling. It's still a solid movie, better, in a lot of ways than the Johnny Depp channeling Michael Jackson version.

While we were at the meal, Lily sang a little song that she learned for Thanksgiving two years ago, "I saw a little turkey/standing by a tree/he gobbled and he wobbled/and ran away from me/I said, little turkey, please come out and play/I promise not to eat you/on Thanksgiving Day!" but somehow "on" got changed to "until" in the last line, which kind of changes the tone of the song.

Notes from the week

Last Saturday, we went to Lily's cousin's party. The theme was Jake and the Neverland Pirates. My brother put on an episode during the party and Izzy, the girl pirate had a puzzle box that Captain Hook wanted, and every time they said something about the puzzle box, I couldn't help but think of Lemarchand's Box from the Hellraiser series.

The party was nice, but a little boy was mean to Lily, and that upset her for the rest of the party. I was happy to see that her other cousin stuck up for her though.

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful. Lily and I had a daddy/daughter date on Wednesday.Since she's has been complaining that everyone tells her what to do, we've been trying to let her make more decisions. I asked her how she wanted to spend her afternoon. "I want to go home and play on the computer." She is so my daughter.

I suggested the local Chinese buffet and she was all over that. Then we went home and played Wenkinz. She really, really likes it. She has two of them, and she bought them matching beds, matching sinks...and matching toilets.

This weekend was pretty full too. Jen and I had been looking forward to a meal at a Thai restaurant downtown all week. We decided to drive part of the way, park on the hill, then cross the bridge over the Delaware on our way to the place. We did this and as we we crossing the final block, we saw a bunch of police cars pull up and double park outside the restaurant. We crossed the street and we weren't sure if we should go in or not, but the waitress waved us in, so we sat down and had our meal. We eat had the house curry, Jen with soy and me with chicken, and it was neat, with lots of pumpkin, but as the on line reviews said, it was a bit too watery.

On Saturday, we hung out, Jen helped her Nan set up for a show, and we did some shopping. I joined Frederick and Danny, and we walked around a cemetery and played Dead Island. I was pleasantly surprised. I had heard a lot of bad things about the game, but Frederick told me that the patch mostly fixed them.

Cemetery Pictures:

Abel, hmmm? Does that make this the House of Mysteries or the House of Secrets? I can never keep them straight.

I went home at around ten and Jen and I streamed some TV, the Parenthood premier (and I think I need some antidepressants of my own after the hundredth time that fucking Abilify commercial played) and the pilot for Up All Night, which was downright inspired.

We had a leisurely Sunday, then Jen took off for church and I stayed home and played video games. She came back for Lily and we met Oma at a local carnival. Lily was so awful that we almost turned the car around. I think that if Oma hadn't been there waiting to see her, that's what we would have done. Lily was upset that she was too small to go on many of the rides, and I already made the Tom-Hanks-In-Big joke in an earlier post, so I'll spare you a rehash. We spent twenty dollars on the thousand different variations of moon bounces they had there.

Lily's mood was much improved when we got back home. Sunday night is becoming Make Your Own Pizza night, so that's what we did.

Healing and hating school

Lily continues to heal, hate school and occasionally say some really weird things.

We were sitting around playing Legos, and within fifteen minutes she chopped up a lego person to hide the body ("How very Fargo of you"), immured another ("How very Cask of Amontillado of you") and ripped the heart out of another, ("How very Mola Ram of you") And she really is the sweetest little kid and very gentle around living things, but man, I would not want to be one of her Lego people.

We instituted an earlier bedtime and it's really working out. I don't think I'm giving away any secrets by saying that I'm Lily's favorite, but I hope someday that she'll come to understand that Jen was the driving force for every bit of progress in her childhood. She pushed to get rid of the pacifier and the bottle and the crib, and now for a more consistent bedtime, and each time, I didn't think Lily was ready, but one thing that makes our marriage work is that we support each other even if we're not sure the other is right.  Jen and I have time to decompress after she goes to sleep, plus she's up earlier and in a better mood,

We're also varying bedtime activities. Lately, Lily's wanted to play with her dolls. She's got a bunch of different stories she likes to play out, such as "Baby Trouble" (where the boy dolls try to impress the girl dolls, but are thwarted when babies start acting up) or when Scott Pilgrim tries to trick Glinda the Good Witch into marrying him, and when that fails, makes her fall asleep by singing "Teenager in Love". I'm sure most of you reading this surely played the same games when you were kids.

She's still enjoying Webkinz. Sometimes I'll play the scrabble game to earn some more money for her so she can buy some more stuff in game. I was happy that it let me spell "Herpes".

We still read comic books at bedtime, but not as much. I was looking at this cover of Scooby Doo, and I was thinking, even though it was the same formula every week, they really did have some memorable designs.

We watched Muppets from Space for our Wacky Wednesday, and Lily really dug it. I had picked her up that Wednesday, and as we were driving home, she asked about watching Danny Phantom. I rather like the show, but Jen doesn't, and it probably isn't age appropriate when you get right down to it. Lily suggested that we vote on it and she asked me to vote on her side. I think it's just adorable that she thinks our house is a democracy.

Fortunately, Jen was on the ball and she had Muppets ready to go. I hadn't seen this one, but all the Muppet movies are pretty entertaining. (I'm quite looking forward to the upcoming film!) There were elements that she didn't like, but overall, it was a hit for the whole family.

Our Weekend: A Tale as Old as Time

Had a mighty nice weekend. On Friday, Lily and Jen and Oma and I all went to Nicolosi's for dinner and then to the Country Gate Players to see a performance of Beauty and the Beast.

It was a "Beauty & the Beast Jr." production performed by kids ages 9-18. All of the kids in the production were good, but the actress who played Belle was absolutely phenomenal. The delivery of her lines was flawless, her singing was so good and sounded so much like the movies that I thought she was lip syncing to the soundtrack until she briefly lost her composure and her laugh came over the speakers. Most of the kids were solid, but she was performing on another level.  (Also, Belle was a good three inches taller than Gaston.)

Lily liked it, though not as much we thought she might. She wore her Belle dress and was generally pretty good.At one point she asked who villain of the piece was and we told her that it was Gaston. She thought for a moment and said, "Well, he's a pretty good looking villain." She also observed that Belle had "nice shoes!"

It was a somewhat abbreviated version, with some songs I didn't recognize, probably added from the Broadway version, and constrained by the budget of a local show. (The bit I mentioned above, when Belle laughed is when the Beast brought her into his library and she was marveling "I've never seen so many books!", but it was the same bare stage they'd been using for the rest of the sets.) They had a couple solid effects, such as smoke coming upfrom below stage to hide the costume change of the witch into the enchantress and the Beast into the prince. Very nice. I was glad we could be a part of it.

That was our Friday. On Saturday, we hung out for a bit and did some shopping for the all the birthdays we have coming up, and then I took off to hang out with the boys at Frederick's house. If you're interested in reading about that, then follow this link.

On Sunday, we went to the birthday party for one of Lily's little friends. She was mostly good, but she was pretty cutthroat during Hot Potato. And there's nothing wrong with that itself, but she was the only one playing to win, fairly thrusting the egg they were using at the other kid, while the other four and five-year-olds were just kind of lackadaisically passing it after a short period of reflection. (At one point, I thought she was going to shank somebody) The adults controlling the music saw this and they tried to stop it when she had it, but she kept passing it off. Hot Pototo probably isn't the best game for that age range, because you've got six sad kids and one winner.

Otherwise it was pretty good. She worked hard on the card, and played well with the other kids. She commented that the one dinosaur looked "realistic" and Jen and I die a little inside when we hear words like that and think that she missed the cutoff to start kindergarten by three days.

Of course, she doesn't always use her powers for good. We were cajoling her to eat and she was turning her nose up at breakfast.

Me: It makes us sad when you don't appreciate cooking. What if you worked on a card very hard on a card and you gave it to somebody and-

Lily: (dismissively) -and they didn't like it? Yeah, I'd be fine with that.

The Thousand Names of Baby Bear

So a while back we lost Lily's stuffed animal, Baby Bear. We had lost her at a local mall previously, but quickly recovered, but this time it was more permanent. We were never sure if she fell off the roof of the car in the parking garage or if we actually made it all the way to the highway before she made her tumble. So we rushed an order on eBay for a replacement Baby Bear and Lily was none the wiser.

She was temporarily lost again at Great Nanny's house, and we ordered another replacement, but in a scene familiar to sci-fi fans, the original was unearthed when the clone was still running around. So we had two Baby Bears, and since Lily takes her everywhere, she occasionally gets left behind at school or at a sleepover, whereupon we break out the Baby Bear we keep in my dresser drawer.

Well, we had a moment where she saw both of them. The one was in a duffel bag from a sleepover and the other was out in the open. Lily poked in the duffel and saw the replacement. She looked at Jen and then asked in a hushed whisper, "Did you know that there were two Baby Bears?!"

So now she's making distinctions between the pair. She announced that one is Baby Bear and the other is Bear Baby ("Her nickname is Cubby, because a cub is a baby bear!") Sometimes when she's laying down to sleep, we'll hold hands and think of "silly stuff", though that's usually more a thing that Jen does with her. I was doing it the other night and I suggested that Baby Bear's mom was really Triplicate Girl, and there was a third Baby Bear out there. She sat up and her lip quivered and she said, "I bet she's all alone and really scared," and I had to reassure her that the third Baby Bear was the white one we gave away to another little kid for a birthday, and that she was happy and well loved.

We were in the cemetery a couple days after that, and we saw a cloud that looked like the number three. I asked Lily who would write in clouds like that and she answered, "Mother Earth?" and later on she said, "You have to listen to Mother Earth!" in that absolutely sincere way little kids have.

She's asking a lot more esoteric questions, like "Does space go on forever?" and "Does the earth ever get any bigger?", the last because she knows there are more people being born and she's worried we'll run out of space. I asked her what we would have to do if we did run out of space, and she said everyone would have to share a house with an old person, and got upset when I thought that was funny.

This Friday, Jen's car broke down on the way home from work. She's terrible about charging her cell phone, so we couldn't reach each other on that. So, I went to the garage where she was going to be towed, waited for 45 minutes, and then got a phone call from Jen on a borrowed phone that she was still waiting for the truck, so I went to pick her up. I got there just as the truck was leaving with her car. Convenient, right? Or it would be, if my car didn't choose that moment to break down as we were driving away. So we pushed it to a local restaurant and called for a second tow. I'm pretty sure it was overheating, (the temperature topped out at 103 degrees that day) because it started up a couple hours later.

Saturday was okay. We went to Jen's sister's baby shower, at a church where Jen had had her own when she was pregnant with Lily. Lily was pretty bored, so I mostly just watched her in the cemetery and the playground.

(I'm very disappointed with this cemetery. The nicest feature is a gazebo near the entrance. It has more garbage cans than I've ever seen in a cemetery too. Two stars. I would not recommend it to my friends.)

Lily decided to start pretending to be Wonder Woman near the end of our time on the playground. She tied up the Joker ("tie-tie") and said "That was easy!" It is easy, Batman! It's not that hard to arrest an anorexic clown! Maybe it's time to face up to the fact that maybe you're not the A-1 sauce of crime-fighting! And after that, she said, "Now I'm going to drink some chocolate milk and go down this sliding board." Wonder Woman even knows how to celebrate in style!

Lily woke up in a good mood on Sunday, and as we were going downstairs, she said, "Let's think about what things we have in common and what things are different," so we decided that we both have brown eyes and we're both nice and funny and smart, and we both like the Legion of Superheroes. When we got downstairs, we talked about what she has in common with mommy. Lily said, "We're both girls and we both wear dresses and we both love you," which I thought was very sweet.

Later in the morning, I was trying to finish up a piece on Veronica Mars when Lily came upstairs and looked at the screen and asked me what I was doing. I told her that I was writing a story about a girl who solves mysteries. She said that she didn't want to be in my story, and pointed to a segment where I wrote about Veronica's best friend Lilly Echols. She's getting very good at spelling. Take a look at the bracelet she put together for me on Sunday morning:

Our mechanic works on weekends, so we got Jen's car back, and then went to the mall where we kind of had an ugly incident. I told Lily I would buy her something in the dollar store. She picked up a little thing that looked like a whistle, but I told her not to blow into it and I took it away because it looked like she was going to do it anyway. As soon as I turned my back, she grabbed another one and blew into it, and I told her that's what we would have to buy. She started bawling. She was really very upset, and it's really hard being a parent at times like this. But we paid for it, and met up with Jen, who asked how we were, and Lily was all "Don't tell mommy what happened!"

The troublesome toy

She calmed down somewhat and went into the computer store to buy a car charger for Jen's phone. While she was paying, Lily and I asked her what her favorite candy was. Then we didn't go over to Gertrude Hawk and we didn't buy Jen a birthday present and Lily didn't say "Mommy is going to be DELIGHTED with her present!" when we were done.

Days Three and Four of our Vacation

Day Three:

Weather: Surprisingly nice during parts of the day.

We went to Sunset Beach on Sunday night, but a cloud obscured the sun just as it was setting.

There's an old shipwreck just off shore there and Lily observed, “Ariel would love this place!” We had promised Lily some ice cream, but we're still in the off season, so a lot of the local places are still closed.

We wound up going to Wawa where Lily got an orange push-up. Then we came home and watched Iron Chef. Lily is a big fan of Bobby Flay!

On Monday we went to the Cape May Zoo. I took a bunch of pictures of the giraffes, because I know my friend Karen really likes them. Here you are, Karen. Giraffes, just for you!

Lily fed some goats and really enjoyed it. I imagine they did too. Lily proclaimed it “the best, best BEST vacation ever!”

We're trying to teach Lily the value of money, so we've been putting aside any cash she received in cards for Easter and such. We thought we were doing pretty well explaining that it's a limited resource and she can get what she wants, but if she spends it now, then she won't have it to spend later. Jen got out the little wallet she was using to carry Lily's money and Lily yoinked it, Jane Jetson-like right out her hand and ran over to the soda machine we had just passed.

This put in a bind, because we just told her that she could spend it how she wanted, but we didn't mean that to supersede our prohibition on soda. Fortunately the soda in the machine was $2.50 (!!) and she hadn't put in enough, so we told her one of those lies to which parents are entitled, that the machine was out of soda, but, hey, she could press this button to get her money back as quarters.

We had another meltdown on the way out, and went from the best, best, best vacation to the worst vacation. (She sometimes says that it's a “forgetting” vacation and when I asked her what that meant, she told me that the vacation is so bad that she wants to forget it.) I think she's going to start oscillating between the two states so rapidly that we'll be able to harness her as a power source.

We got back from the zoo and we all had a nice nap. Lily woke later than we did and walked into the room when Iron Chef was on and said, “So, what's the secret ingredient?”

Day Four

Weather: Misleading.

Lily was late to bed last night and frightfully early to rise to rise in the morning. We worked on some projects, and when I told Lily that she was doing a nice job coloring like a big kid, she replied, “Thanks daddy, I appreciate the compliment that I'm coloring it nicely like a big kid.”

This is a sentence from a child who missed the cutoff date by three days and who is going to have to wait another year to go into kindergarten. Le Sigh.

We kind of dicked around all day, because the weather kept calling for these horrific thunderstorms that never came. I walked around town and got lost. I think everyone interested in reading this has already seen the weather report I posted on Facebook.

Rotten Liars!

Jen took some time and went birding. I suppose the biggest news of the day was that Lily got a decent amount of time to practice riding her bike. That was nice. It's a big milestone for a little kid.

Where the sidewalk ends

Quite a bit happened over this weekend, both good and bad, but before that, giraffes!

My friend Karen reads this blog, but only because I sometimes mention giraffes. So rather than bury the giraffe portion in the middle, I thought I'd just put it right up front so she wouldn't have to search around for it.

I found this website, where a Russian family raises and sells petite lap giraffes. Have you ever seen anything cuter? I'm sure Karen will have some choice words about it, that's for sure.

When we were eating on Saturday, Lily said "I'm concerned about going to church," and I said "You're concerned?", because it was such a strange choice of words for a little kid and she looked at me and said, "I believe you know what concerned means?", which was of course, even stranger.

She went to sleep early on Saturday and woke up in a bad mood on Sunday. The mother of all bad moods. A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad mood. I don't know what set her off.

As she was getting undressed for her bath, she hit me with the dress she had just taken off. I picked her up and told her not to do that, whereupon she blew a raspberry right in my face. I put her on time-out, which upset her even more. And the next hour and a half was pretty bad. Lily was saying, "I don't want a mommy or daddy any more! I don't want to live here!" and stuff like that, on and on.

She eventually calmed down in spite of everything and we took off for church in the nick of time.

We were looking forward to this for a while, because I rarely attend church with Jen and Lily, but I was going this week because Lily would be singing a couple songs as part of their program. It's fairly well known that Unitarian Universalists worship Cthulhu, and I'm somewhat uneasy with that.

Somehow he got left off this list of famous unitarians

(I can hear the complaints now. "I don't really like giraffes!" "We don't worship Cthulhu!")

Lily was pretty cute. Her age level perfomed two songs,  Love Grows in both spoken word and sign language, and a short ditty of the UU Principles set to the tune of one of her favorites, "Do, Re, Mi". ("One: Each person is worthwhile, Two: Be kind in all you do..." etc.)


I'd put a video up here, but blogger degrades the quality of hosted videos so much that it's not worth it. Since people mostly read my Lily posts when they feed into Facebook, I might as well just put the video up there.

We stopped in at a place Jen had read about in a local magazine, Hello Burrito. I liked the food. I loved the fact that the Yelp review to which I linked ranks the restaurant's ambiance as "Hipster".

We weren't done yet, because we took off to a local playground to play around for a while, even though the temps were still in the 30s.  We ran around for a bit until we were able to lure Lily away with promises of a brownie tasting at Terra Cafe. I read about it on a local blog that I happen to enjoy and it was really quite neat. They had live music and brownie samples in all the colors of the rainbow. The hazelnut and sea salt were nifty, but my heart belonged to the caramel bacon brownies.

This is what you eat in heaven. Unless you're a Unitarian. In their heaven, Cthulhu eats YOU!

When it came to buying some to take home, we were considerably more conservative, and got one each of the pineapple and the peanut butter.

As we were walking back to the car at the end of our very busy day, Lily looked at piece of broken sidewalk and very matter-of-factly declared, "Oh. This must be where the sidewalk ends."

I'm pleased we managed to reclaim as much of the day as we did. 

$#*! My Daughter Says

Just a random collection of Lily's wit and wisdom.

I was reading Lily a Little Mermaid story for bedtime and as we were wrapping up, she asked why Ariel had red hair. I couldn't remember the name of the pigment that accounts for red hair in humans (and presumably mer-people too), so I stalled for time while trying to recall it by saying, "Because her mom had red hair."

Lily: Or maybe it's because she dyes it.
Me: I guess that's possible. It must be hard to dye your hair underwater, though-
Lily: Or maybe she eats red seaweed!
Me: Wha-?
Lily: Yeah, instead of dying her hair, she eats red seaweed and it turns her hair red! And Triton is like 'Ariel, I don't want you eating red seaweed to be more like a human!" but she keeps eating it because she likes having red hair.
Me: (To Jen) Your daughter is weird.

Lily had a pretty nice Valentine's Day. She's only four, so everybody gives everybody else a Valentine with Scooby Doo or Jesse from Toy Story or one that says "I Choo-Choo-Choose You" and there's a picture of a train. She was telling us that she got a Valentine from a certain boy and that he was her boyfriend. She said, "Don't worry, daddy. You're my other boyfriend." Blink. "And mommy's my other girlfriend." Her other girlfriend? I didn't even know she had a first one! She had once told us that she liked two boys in her class (because they each "dance funny and don't get many time outs and sometimes they pull their eyelids down to look like monsters") and I asked her about the second boy. She said he was her "last boyfriend". Boy, we're never getting out of this rabbit hole.

Jen: Want to hear a dirty joke?
Lily: Yes!
Me: (From the other room) It's disturbing how enthusiastically she agreed.
Jen: A pig fell in the mud.
Lily: *Laughs*
Jen: Want to hear a clean joke?
Lily: Sure.
Jen: The pig took a bath.
Lily: That's not a joke.

I've mentioned that Lily likes watching anything she describes as "Scary stuff". Lately, she's been having bad dreams every night, so I asked her why she likes scary stuff when she's awake, but it scared her when she was asleep. She said, "Well, I know it's just pretend when I'm awake, but sometimes I don't remember that when I'm asleep," which I felt was an unusually cogent answer for a four-year-old.

We were watching some cooking shows on Youtube and one of the videos was some random Austrailian dude teaching us how to make doughnuts. Lily listened for a minute and said "I think he's one of the Wiggles."

I replied, "Well, he's from Australia so he sounds like one of the Wiggles, but I don't think he's actually a Wiggle."

She nodded in understanding. "Oh, right. He just pretends to be a Wiggle on TV. I think he's the one in the yellow shirt."

And I said, "Yes, that's exactly right."

Later on in the car, we were listening to some songs from the Sound of Music and Lily likes to sing along with the high notes that conclude certain songs. I told her that under certain circumstances, a human voice could shatter glass, but that she'd have to practice a lot if she wanted to be able to do that. Jen said something about not practicing it when mommy and daddy were in the house.

Lily asked, "Because daddy wears glasses and I might break them, right?"
And I said, "Yes, that's exactly right."

After we got home, Lily was talking with mom, having the same conversation that mothers and daughters have had down through the generations.

Lily: When you die your head falls off.
Jen: (Pause) I don't thinks that's always true.
Lily: It is. (Pause.) But they don't mind, because they're already dead.
Jen: ...
Lily: I think God makes people's heads fall off so He can eat them.
Jen: Lily, you have some strange ideas in your head.

I have two tags at my blog, Lily does something cute and Lily does something horrid, and it's strange much overlap there is between the two.