Repetition all over again...dear DSI-ary

I usually have a good idea where Izzy gets some of the things she says. It's not hard to find her influences as she goes about her day. There are time however, when she will let something fly that has no basis in anything but her own skewed reality. This was one such occasion. I picked her up from school as usual and she wasn't acting at all like her self.
Daddy:"What's the matter, you seem upset?"
Isobel:"Hrmph."
Daddy:"No, really pick, what's the matter?"
Isobel:"Hrmph."
Daddy:"I can't help you if you don't tell me what it is."
Isobel:"Hrmph."
Daddy:"O.K. when you feel like talking..."
Isobel:(cutting me off) "My eyebrows stink."



I suppose it was inevitable that this day would come, I just didn't think it would happen until she was well into her teenage years. Isobel has informed me that she no longer likes school, in fact she hates it.
"I am five now(for two days by her calculations) and I don't like school anymore. It's boring for me now. I should be done."
"What is boring about it?" I asked.
"We do all the same crap all the time," she said. "we sing wheels on the bus and we do spelling and learn about dinosaurs. Over and over again and I've done that too many times now. I should be done."
I thought about this for a while. It was not something so black and white that had a definite solution and if I were too laid back about it, I would appear to not care about her education which would give her permission to not care either. And that just wouldn't fly around here.
"Maybe you could talk to the teacher about how you feel and maybe she might be able to give you some new things to do that you don't know already."
She pounced on this. "I tried to talk to her already. I asked her what the hell we are doing here but she wouldn't answer me."
I tried to sympathize. "Maybe you just have to tough it out for a bit more to get to the new stuff. I was bored a lot in school too but I did get to learn lots of new things."
"I HATE wheel on the bus." she said.
I could see she was starting to get pretty wound up over things and I felt bad but I was also a little giddy at the tirade that I knew was about to be released. She didn't disappoint.
"AAAAND, Edith is younger than me and she pees her pants. AAANNNDDD she doesn't know what dead is. I told her her do you now what dead means? She said that it means they put a blanket over you and you go to sleep and that isn't it at all. I do that every night and I'm not dead. I told her that dead means dead and that's it and I don't pee my pants. And that's why I don't want to go to school anymore."




So it was Isobel's birthday this week. The big 05...it really does seem like it was yesterday that I could hold her in one hand. (which I learned quickly is a very stupid and foolhardy thing to do...) She wanted a video game like the Boy has ans so we got her one. A pink hand held which has become her new best friend.
My mother called to wish her a happy birthday and asked her what she got. The conversation went something like this.
Nana:"Happy birthday Isobel. What did you get from Mummy and Daddy?"
Isobel:"I got a DSi, a pink one."
Nana:"Oh, what is that? What is a DSi?"
Isobel:"It's a DS with an i in it."

She has one game, the point of which more or less eludes me but she seems to enjoy it. Not nearly as much as she enjoys its other features. It has a built in camera and effects to manipulate the pictures you have taken and it has a voice recorder...a diary...an invisible friend that can finally give feedback. She has been speaking into this thing virtually since she unwrapped it and she speaks to it as though it were a person.
"So where was I? Oh, yeah, I have to go back to school and I hate school but I already told you that."
Maybe she has a friend overseas that she sends these messages to?
She walks around the house giving guided tours to the DSi.
"This is our kitchen and that is my Mom. She is making supper. And that's my brother. He is playing a DSi too. And that's my Dad and he drinks scotch.(Single malt to anyone thinking of a nice gift and in my own defense, I was not drinking at the time.)
When I was a kid the best gift I ever got was a pellet gun like all the other kids in the neighbourhood. There was a sense of belonging and being like the rest of the gang once I got it. I slept with it a couple of times...My brother shot the next door neighbour in the ass(and blamed me for it) with it while he mowed his back lawn and I never saw the gun again...
Izzy hasn't taken to sleeping with the DSi just yet but she has joined in with the ranks of millions of other kids hunched over little glowing boxes, slowly going blind from squinting. It is a heartening feeling and really does give a sense of family now to yell "SUPPER!" at the top of my lungs and have two kids completely ignore me.