Isobel learns sign language...I kissed a what?...

It was late and I was putting Isobel to bed.
Isobel: "Daddy, I'm sleepy."
Daddy: "Me too. I don't want to go to work, I want to go to bed."
Isobel: "Daddy, have you ever fallen asleep at work?"
Daddy: "I've dozed off a couple of times, yes."
Isobel: "They have beds at your work!!??!"
Daddy: "No honey, no beds. I fell asleep at the table."
Isobel: "There are beds on the table...what?"
Daddy: "No beds. There are no beds at the table, OK?"
Isobel: "OK. No beds at the table."
Isobel: "Daddy?"
Daddy: "Yes?"
Isobel: "Where do they put the sleeping bags when you're not sleeping in them at work?"





It never ceases to amaze me how quickly children develop and what they pick up along the way. They learn to speak most times without any real effort on the parents part. Oh sure, you correct grammar and the like along the way(unless it is especially funny and then you put it into a blog and hope many people read it) but by and large they learn it all on their own.
Television is, for my money, one of the greatest baby sitter's and teachers of language and societal norms available today. Because of T.V. my children can speak a little Spanish and a little Chinese. They both know how to sing the inch worm song,(two and two are four, four and four are eight etc...) though the other precepts of math are clearly eluding Isobel for the time being.
There are other things however, that can only be learned by careful observation of the human condition. Gestures and hand signals. We all use them, every one of us but I don't recall anyone ever teaching them to me. Nor did I teach Izzy any of them. But she is familiar with most of the internationally recognized signals and gestures.
She can tell you to come here, go away and once you have gone away, she can inform you that she can no longer hear you. She can tell you she's hungry, tired, she has a headache and even that she has farted, all without a single word. Though the last one we seldom need hand signals for.
There are hand signals that carry a certain weight in western society and Isobel (being her father's daughter) has taken to one in particular with relish and zeal. The one finger salute, the Trudeau stir stick, the F--- finger.
I didn't teach it to her, I swear. (pun intended) I actually prefer the U.K version where the offending middle finger is joined by the index finger in a sort of reverse peace symbol, which of course must be accompanied by a raspberry sound while being displayed. Though Mrs. Narrator is a fan of hoisting the middle digit. Why just the other day, she was demonstrating her proficiency in displaying it for me.
I had never actually seen Izzy do it but the Boy, who tends to get a little squeamish when Izzy lets fly with these things, would let everyone in earshot know that she was showing it.
"Izzy! Stop showing the middle finger!" echoed through the house and every time I heard it, I would quick run over to see if I could catch her doing it but she would tuck her hands away quickly.
I was downstairs on the treadmill when she came down to ask me if she could have a snack. She came back downstairs with a bowl and sat on a stool while I continued to run. Out of the corner of my eye I could see she was doing something odd. She had one hand in her lap and was manipulating it with the other. She held her transfigured hand very still and made her way from the stool to the stairs and when she had reached the top of the stairs she turned back to me.
"Daddy, look." she said
And there it was in all it's glory. "Phhht" she made a raspberry noise as she displayed it and then disappeared with a giggle.
I stood there with satisfaction and a little pride washing over me after seeing that...Then I came to the realization that what I had just witnessed was not accidental nor misunderstood. With the time and effort she had expended and the journey from the stool to the stairs and the waiting until the time was just right and a getaway was fast and easy...my five year old had just flipped me the bird.







We were at the movies a couple of weeks ago and the kids were both just getting over the cold that seemed endless this winter. Isobel was hit particularly by it. A double whammy, the cold and skin that was so dry it was actually cracking at her finger tips. She had been showing me the end of her index finger all day and making sure that I knew about the crack.
"Daddy, I have a crack in my finger from it being dry skin on it."
"Well, we'll just have to be careful of it and maybe put some medicine on it." I said.
"OK ," she said. "But don't put anymore hand cream on it. That made it hurt like hell." We learned that lesson the hard way.
She must have gotten some salt from the popcorn into the cut because she said it was really starting to sting but she didn't want to go to the bathroom and miss any of the movie. A little condensation from the side of the bucket of Pepsi worked nicely as a substitute and a kiss from Daddy made it all better.
A little while later I had dozed off a bit and woke up to Izzy's finger stuck firmly in my face. I figured she had gotten more salt on it so I reached for the pop and rubbed a little moisture on it and gave it a feel better kiss.
Isobel looked at me with a very odd expression and laughed an uncomfortable laugh.
"What?" I asked.
"You just kissed a booger." she said.
"What?" I said snapping awake. "What, I kissed what?"
"A booger." she repeated. "I couldn't find a Kleenex so I picked it out and it got stuck to my finger."
"Eeeewwwww," I said wiping my mouth with a napkin and gulping at the soda, in a vain attempt to wash away what I had just done.
Now you can swallow as much Pepsi as you like and wash your face with soap and water repeatedly but you can't scrub your brain and the image of me planting lips on the neon green nugget was locked in there for at least a week. Thankfully Izzy's long term memory is not fully developed yet. As it was she wouldn't kiss me the whole rest of the night. Though I can see her many years from now talking to a friend when a repressed memory bubbles to the surface."...yeah, and then my Dad kissed a booger."

On my watch...Izzy goes to the movies while the Boy discusses Balzac...

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Izzy takes the midnight express, becomes an art critic and gets freaked out...Love coms to town...

We were laying in bed after story time, just cuddling and waiting for the drowsiness to overtake her. She took my hand in hers and kissed it.
Daddy: "Aww, thanks. That was very nice of you."
Isobel: "You're welcome. Daddy, let me see your hand.
She took my hand again and looked at it intently, as though she expected weasels to come crawling out of it. O.K. maybe not weasels but she was looking at it very hard.
Daddy: "What's the matter, what are you looking at?"
Isobel: Daddy?"
Daddy:"Yes?"
Isobel: "Daddy, when I get bigger, will my hands look all old like yours?"



When there are two parents that have social activities outside the home, the day to day duties must often be shared and Isobel's Sunday bath time has fallen to me. It's not a chore, in fact it has become kind of a game. Let's see just how much water can be displaced from the tub onto the tile surround and the floor before the entire bathtub ends up in the downstairs kitchen.
It used to be you had to sit on the edge of the tub with her and quick pull her head up when she decided she could swim and discovered she really couldn't and then wash her up when she had had enough. Now you don't need to be so much of a life guard with her though she still drinks her fair share of tub water and still needs help to wash her ' back of ' parts.
Cleanliness is important, we all know this and there are things that all parents must teach their children about being clean. There are also things that as a father, I am woefully ill equipped to give any meaningful help with. If the Boy came to me in confidence and said he was having an issue with either the 'frank' or the 'beans', I would know with most certainty that I would be able to offer some assistance. Even Mrs. narrator will send inquiries of this nature my way. I am a guy, I have the parts, I've read the manual. And even way back when, when It was Izzy referred to it as her 'pee-er' or 'wee-wee', I didn't have too much trouble giving a once over and trying to determine the issue...nine out of ten times it was still a version of diaper rash and what parent hasn't dealt with that?
This past weekend however, things changed...
I was in the room next door folding laundry and she called out to me,
"Daddy, I have a rash come and look at it."
"Where is the rash?" I asked as I walked through the door.
"On my vagina." she said.
"Wait, what?... Where?"
"On my..."
"Jeez Izzy, don't say that." I said.
"Why?" she asked. "That's what it' called you know."
"I know what it's called, I just didn't expect you to call it that for a while."
I was surprised that I had become squeamish at her calling parts of her anatomy by their proper name. I should have been quite proud at her maturity.
"Girls have a vagina and boys have a penis, which is also called a crotch." she went on.
"Very thorough," I said. "Show me this rash."
Now I must interject here that unless you are a very bad person who tries to take bad things to other bad people in foreign countries, at no time should the following pose be demonstrated by any member of your household...ever.
"Look," she said. "see I have a rash."
She had bent forward until her forehead was touching her knees and was holding onto her butt cheeks with both hands. Not spreading or moving anything just holding onto them. It was like a scene from a bad crazy drug movie and Izzy was some kind of smuggler. I wasn't about to play the guard.
"Is there a rash Daddy?"
"Nope, nope!" I said.
"You're not even looking." Isobel said.
"You're right." I replied. "Go get dressed...in your snow pants."

This week was the scene of a monumentous happening as The Boy has had a piece of his art work put on display in a local museum. A pretty damned big deal and more than I can say ever happened to me at ten.
We of course decided to take a trip to the gallery to have a look at his and all the other works of art and Izzy was beside herself. Much talking to friends on her toy cell phone and hours of haranguing and wrangling her minions so that they behaved in the proper manner when we got there.
It was a smaller display than we thought but full of prestige none the less ad lo and behold there was The Boy's masterpiece on the wall with work by some of his classmates. A snappy blue and green number that reminded me of an Escher painting. it was very well done and we were all proud of him. He was modest and felt it wasn't his best work. he is well on his way to becoming an artist.
As we walked around Isobel and I came across a piece that was like a 3 d picture of a doll with hair made out of string and real flowers in it's hand. Written on the board it was drawn on was "A Child's Garden of Verse." by Robert Louis Stevenson.
"Izzy," I said. "look at this. Isn't it nice?"
She looked at it thoughtfully and said to me, "Oh god. What the hell is that?"
Pray she doesn't start working the art reviews for the AGO...

While we were out at the gallery, something strange happened that I have never noticed before. The grandparents met us there and Both Izzy and The Boy rushed into the waiting arms of Opa but when it came time to give Oma a hug Izzy backed away and then ran over to Mrs. narrator and wouldn't budge. Normally she will go to either of the grandparents with ease...often preferentially over Mrs. Narrator or me. Try what we could, Isobel would not give her a hug.
I asked her about it at bedtime that night.
"Why didn't you want to give Oma a hug tonight?"
"I bumped my face and then she kinda freaked me out."
Grandmothers can be a little overwhelming sometimes...



Love has come knocking on our door...earlier than any of us expected but here none the less. The Boy has gotten himself a bona fide girlfriend. I'm not sure what acronym applies here, he claims they are BFF's but he also called her his GF or was it his BGF?
He has been dutifully checking his email everyday to see he latest dispatch from her and told me walking home with her makes him feel 'very happy, like so happy I feel like I'm gonna blow up.'
I didn't have the heart to tell him this is only the beginning and that it's only going to get worse from her. Instead, I shook his hand and welcomed him to the club. No sense spoiling the surprise for him right out of the gate...

I'm a Boy...Metal love...

Isobel : "Daddy, how do you spell Be Careful?"
Izzy asked me this one day as we were walking around. Since she hears this from me or Mrs. Narrator about 70 times a day, I really wasn't surprised when she asked me how to spell it.
Daddy: "B-E. C-A-R-E-F-U-L...Be Careful.
Isobel: "Soooo....I won't ever remember that."



When I was younger and pictured myself in the role of a parent, I supposed that I would be the father of a boy or two and that I would probably teach them all of the things that you would expect a father to teach you. All things sport, beer drinking, the birds and the bees and flatulence. I played hockey for roughly twenty minutes as a kid and sports as a whole bore me to tears. The mysteries of the birds and the bees, I confess still confounds me more than a little. I am fairly confident however, in my ability to impart wisdom on suds and burping and farting.
I wasn`t disappointed when I was handed a baby girl. I had said (like most delusional parents) that I didn`t care the gender of the baby, so long as it was healthy. That or I wanted circus freak deformities like a beak or flippers so we could start exploiting it from the get go. I figured if a girl came out then I could still teach her the ways of the grunting male, I might just have to alter the lessons slightly.
As we have seen by past demonstrations, there were no alterations...
I don`t know why this week in particular has been all about the bodily functions for Isobel but it has...in spades. I thought only little boys embraced burping and farting with such vigour and zeal, I know I did (and still do!) but Izzy is right up there with the best of them. The student is fast surpassing the master.
We were sitting at the supper table the other night and she rattled the windows with a burp that was followed by shock and awe from The Boy and I.
"Wow," she said. "that was weird."
"What do you say?" I asked, trying hard to conceal my pride and act fatherly.
"You swine." she replied.
It has all been about farts and burps and burping and farting. Burping elves and farting preachers and 'thank you Jesus for farting like that' and 'Daddy what does it mean when the wind breaks?' We have also learned the valuable, albeit painful lesson that if you swallow huge gulps of air you can make yourself burp but it will often result in painful, endless hiccups...You know you try to explain it but they really only learn by experience. I expect her to start reaching for the stove any time now.
I walked past her the other day and for the smell that hovered around her, there should have been a green cloud.
"Oh my god Isobel. Was that you?" I asked, my eyes beginning to water.
"Nope." she said and glanced around the room. "Brooklyn!" she hollered at the cat. "That stinks."
"That's my girl." I said.
It was bedtime and I was lying with her while she was dozing off, when from out of the ether came a sound like a lamb playing a slide whistle. A kind of "Wheeeelp" sound. Izzy fell into hysterics.
"I fahted." she said and continued to howl with laughter.
"Really?" I asked. "Me too."
"For real?" she asked suddenly very serious. "Eww Daddy, that's gross."

"The best thing about boys is they get to pee standing up." Isobel announced one day and it should have registered something parental in me somewhere but alas it didn't and I'm sure I mumbled some sort of agreement.
Now Izzy has seen me come out of the shower and seen me use the bathroom any number of times and there are the obvious questions that always arise but she always comes back to peeing standing up.
"Mummy says you should sit down to pee, it's easier on everybody." Izzy said.
"Mummy is probably right," I said. "but I have been peeing standing up for a long time. It's a hard habit to break."
Now I didn't really think beyond the simple inquisitiveness of the five year old brain, though with Isobel there is nothing typical...or even five years old about her.
"Daddy!" she screamed from the bathroom. "Daddy, come quick!"
I ran thinking something terrible was happening to her and my eyes fell upon a sight I am not likely to forget anytime soon...There, naked from the waist down, was my daughter. Straddling the toilet and peeing standing up. I had heard from Mrs. Narrator that she had done this sort of thing before but I don't think it registered in my brain...or maybe I didn't listen. Maybe it was just years of conditioning that says little girls pee sitting down. Unless they are drunken punk rock girls who win bets by writing their names in the snow...but that is something else entirely.
"Look Daddy! I'm a boy, I'm peeing like a boy!" Wee-haw!" she exclaimed.
I turned and walked out without a word...what could I say?
"Make sure you flush!"




Ding-Dong the Biebs is dead...

There was a television blurb about Justin Bieber a couple of days ago and normally Izzy will drop what she is doing and run to fawn over the television.
"Izzy, your boyfriend is on T.V." I said.
"Who?" she asked.
"Justin Bieber, he's your boyfriend right?"
"No." she said. "I don't love Justin Bieber anymore."
I remembered a conversation with the babysitter from earlier this week, when she had mentioned that her son kissed Izzy and Izzy said she liked it. But Izzy said she didn't love little D anymore either. I asked her if it was the boy we had met in Mexico, the boy who's hand she held and told everyone that this was her boyfriend.
"Nope." she said. "I don't love him either. I have a new boyfriend now."
"Who is it?" I asked.
"HIM!" she said pointing at the computer screen. "I love him now, he has a good voice and a white face."
The him in question is the bass player from a Norwegian Black metal band...he has a very white face(thanks in no small part to the make-up) and he looks like a viking...he very likely is a viking...he does have a lovely voice...ding-dong the Biebs is dead...

Izzy works Blue...Flying blind...

She sat in the back of the car, smelling her gloves(which sounded more like she was snorting them) and making a pee-yew noise.
Isobel-(Snooort) "Pee-yew!"
Isobel-(Snooort) "Pee-yew!"
Daddy-"What's the matter?"
Isobel- (Snooort) "Pee-yew, my gloves stink."
Daddy-"Oh yeah? Why do your gloves stink?"
Isobel-(Snooort) "Eeew, my gloves stink like pee."
Daddy-(laughing) "Why do your gloves stink like pee? Did somebody pee on your gloves?"
Isobel-(Cryptically) "Maybe..."


There comes a time when you just have to step back and stop being...parental for a while and let the kid be a kid. Sitting around sipping margaritas on a Tuesday night in Mexico is as close to one of those times as I think one can ever get.
The beginning of this was simple enough, my mother in law has decided that we swear too much, (I never did find out if she meant Mrs. Narrator and I or the family as a whole) and so we would set up a swear jar. The thought being anytime someone swears, a quarter goes in the jar and when it gets to a decent amount, we buy bagpipes with it...I mean the family does something nice and tries not to refill it while doing the nice thing.
The Boy took to this idea with relish, thinking that the proceeds of the swear jar go to the person who swore the least or not at all. So not only did he not swear, he took it upon himself to remind everyone else that they owed money to the jar...which in turn caused them to owe more money. A brilliant scheme if you ask me and one I wish I would have thought of myself. Though the prospect of me going through life without uttering a single profane thing is sadly, unlikely...god-dammit. (see) He carried on this way until he found out that the swear jar's proceeds would not be coming his way despite his monastic devotion to living curse free and this revelation forced him to make a contribution of his own to the jar. They all fall eventually.
It became rather funny and cut-throat all the same. Everyone ratting and tattling on everyone else.
"That's a quarter..." rang out through the halls of the condo from morning to night as son turned against mother and daughter against grandmother, all hoping to fill the jar in record time. I myself was down for $ 2.50 in the short walk from the condo to the beach (blister on my pinky toe) To what end this would all come, I don't think anyone was certain but it was starting to become The Treasure of the Sierra Madre around that place. Mistrust and suspicion ran rampant as everyone insisted that someone else owed money to the god awful jar.
I should probably state right now that the jar never actually existed. The jar was a suggestion from Mrs. narrator's mother and it spawned this chaos. I shudder to think of the result if there had actually been a jar. It made for a very polite house with many minding their P's & Q's but it also made things feel forced and awkward and just not us.
Isobel had just about as much as she could take and the cracks were starting to show through the veneer. She was getting frustrated doing something and let one fly.
"Shit!" she said.
"That's a quarter," said The Boy.
"Daddy, can I say that word?"
"What word, Izzy?" I asked.
"Shit." she said.
"You shouldn't say that word, no." I said without much enthusiasm.
"But I just love it so much!" she blurted.
I can't emphasize enough, just how much zeal and passion were in her voice at that moment. it has always been one of my favourite words too so who was I to say something when she went on.
"Shit...that's a quarter. Shit...that's a quarter. Shit...that's a quarter."
"IZZY!" said The Boy, looking as though he might faint away at the potential windfall that would go in the swear jar from his sister's lone tirade.
"When we go to get groceries next time, maybe I should as the cab driver if I can take my shit in his cab?"
"Oh man," said The Boy. He got up and walked away. He was either embarrassed by this all or he went to find a calculator. Then she turned to her grandmother and continued.
"Oma, it's OK to swear like me. I can only say shit and god-dammit. I can't say the really bad one. I can't say fuck but you probably can, you're older than me."
"Alright," Mrs. narrator said. "Now it's getting out of control. At first it was kind of cute but now it's getting carried away. No more swearing Isobel."
"None, not even shit?" she asked.
"None," said Mrs. Narrator. "It's enough now."
"See Daddy, I didn't even say fuck." said Isobel.
"That's good Pick," I said, unsure what I should say.
"That's a quarter," said The Boy.




Like all good things, our time in Mexico came to an end and so we went to the airport and headed for home. I'd like to say it was uneventful but it wasn't...though the tribulations at the Mexican airport are best left for another day.
We boarded our plane for the second leg of our journey and Izzy got the window seat next to me. She was thrilled about having a window seat. She was equally thrilled about the contents of the seat back.
"Look Daddy, look at my magazines and this is my...Daddy what is this?'
"It's an emergency manual." I replied.
"Right," she went on. "my emergency manual."
The she saw the last thing in the seat back and from her expression and exuberance, you'd have thought it was the academy award...she certainly deserved one...
"And look Daddy...MY puke bag!"
"It certainly is." I said. If you look out the window in a minute or two, you'll be able to see the lights of the whole city."
It was about seven o'clock and it was still February and so already dark outside as we took off.
"Wow, look at all the lights. So pretty. Hey Daddy, I can see our house from here!"
"You have some great eyes Izzy if you can see our house all the way from Chicago."
Within a couple of minutes we had risen above the clouds and she couldn't see anything but inky blackness.
"Daddy, I can't see anything anymore."
We're too high now honey. If it was daytime you could see something but at night all you can see is dark."
"Great," she said. "Now I'm blind. I'm flying blind."
Soon the flight attendant came by with the cart and asked Isobel if she wanted anything to drink. She naturally became shy and buried her face in armpit. She whispered in my ear and I chuckled out loud. The flight attendant asked if Isobel had whispered what she wanted to me.
"No," I replied. "She wants to know if the pilot can turn the lights on outside the plane so she can see the ground."