Isobel: "Daddy, I have one of those things."
Daddy: "One of what things?"
Isobel: "One of those little red things that show up on your face and then go away."
Daddy: "A zit?"
Isobel: " That's it. You have one too, right there."
Daddy: "Do you mean the red marks on my face? Those aren't zits, that's really dry skin."
Isobel: "No, that right there."(pointing)
Daddy: "That's not a zit, that's a mole. It won't ever go away."
Isobel: "Can I see?" (touching it with her finger and quickly pulling her hand away)
Daddy: "What?"
Isobel: "Touching that made me feel kinda weird. Like weird in my body." (Touching her sides)
Daddy: "Oh yeah?"
Isobel: "Hey Daddy, I can feel my lungs!"
It's good to see your children developing relationships with people. Good to watch them form friendships that may last a lifetime, or might peter out and disappear by the end of the school year. The Boy has, on one hand, a friend who spent the night and humped him every chance he got. He has not been spoken of by anyone in the house since then. But he has another friend with whom he spent the entire day, literally. Mrs. Narrator dropped him off at 9:00 a.m and he came wandering back home around six that night...all day video games and not a single mention of humping...it is a different dynamic. It's good to watch it unfold, to see two kids interacting on more or less the same level.
Izzy too, has two very different friends. Although the three of them all get along, there is a different dynamic that runs between the three of them. They are both in Izzy's class at school but there is definitely a difference in the way they play and the way Izzy acts toward them. I don't want to say one child is smarter or better than the other, because that isn't what I mean but one friend is less assertive than the other and so Izzy tends to be the boss at any given time when they play. Izzy suggest the games and calls all the shots. Her friend knows this and accepts it.
The other friend however, is more on an equal playing field with Izzy. She may not be in charge but she is also not about to back down when it comes to getting what she wants...It was this friend that came over for a play date...
The recurring theme seemed to be 'little girls are worse than little boys, who knew?'
Picture if you will, the Tasmanian devil. A swirling tornado of destruction with the odd hand or foot poking out of it. Now add giggling and glitter erupting from the tornado and that about sums up the Saturday of the play date.
Izzy's friend arrived in the afternoon and first off, they are remarkably similar in appearance and build. Both very cute, dirty-blond haired, five year old girls. They are also very similar in attitude and there seems to be a struggle just below the surface as to who will ultimately decide the way the playing will go.
When The Boy had his friend over, I noticed they got down to business right away. They were playing video games and it was going to commence as soon as they got in the house. They would take a break at supper time at which point gaming would commence anew and they would play until such time as they tired of it or another notion of activity struck them as interesting and fun.
There was no discernible direction of play with the girls. Not that that sort of of thing matters, play shouldn't have any directives but it was interesting to watch. For most of the first hour the two of them were together, it was running from room to room and giggling and squealing and tittering and running more and laughing and squealing and loud and giggling and that was so high pitched it's a good thing we haven't got a dog and running and laughing. They were having fun so who am I to say anything?
Soon, out came the make-up box and the mirror. At last they were starting to act like I though little girls should act. Make-up and Barbies and tea parties, that sort of thing. Dad's are mostly clueless about the habits of their children. I am apparently, no exception. Now Izzy has been playing with and enjoying make up for quite sometime but her make up tastes have been influenced by Kiss, Alice Cooper and several Norwegian Black Metal Bands. To say that she is unique in what she considers excellent make-up is a bit of an understatement.
When her friend came over to Mrs. Narrator and Me to show off her new make over, she said "I feel like I don't look good." and off they giggled to look in the bathroom mirror. Shortly there after, out came the make up remover wipes and they were on to round two. Izzy tried to be a bit more conservative and a little less 'Izzy' when she put her friend's make-up on for a second time and everyone seemed happy with the results.
"Not everyone has the same tastes in make-up." I remember saying to no one in particular. (not that either of the girls cared that words were escaping my mouth)
"If you want to run with this gang," said Mrs. Narrator half under her breath, "you need to let all of that shit go."...indeed.
The make-up went away as quickly as it came out and they were on to something else. They started and finished activity after activity with reckless abandon. I couldn't get my head around it but made this was some sort of natural, primitive training for multi-tasking I was witnessing. Much the same way that boys wrestle and tussle as a primitive practice for hunting. (no really, that's why they do it)
I feel that I need to state for the record, that when The Boy had a sleep over, the worst mess I cleaned up was the pile of blankets in his bedroom after the two of them got the fear and moved upstairs in the middle of the night. Little girls are worse than little boys, who knew? They may have have been practicing their multi-taking skills by moving from toy to toy and game to game but cleaning was not one of the skills they seemed to be interested in honing. At all.
How in the Hell are two five year old girls capable of making a mess on that large a scale? Nagasaki would have taken less time to sort out than the catastrophic fail of a bed room that I walked into. Clothes everywhere, dress up clothes, regular clothes, Izzy's clothes, her friend's clothes(what exactly they were doing, I can't be certain) Barbie and Ken in positions that suggested they were playing twister with Barbie's horse. I felt myself beginning to boil just looking at the mess but what was I going to do, blow my stack in front of her friend? Of course not. I but my tongue, swallowed my pride and put Barbie and Ken and the contorted horse back into the appropriate drawer.
I watched Izzy go through a change that day. her friend was not so easily influenced as some of the others and so she needed to take somebody else's feelings and needs into consideration if she wanted the play to continue. It was fun to watch and it is what friendship is a really about, the ballet of give and take that we all go through.
At one point, they were playing at being terrified and chased by ghosts. They would run from room to room, screaming and hiding behind bits of furniture until the evil was gone. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Izzy putting her hands together in a sort of prayer. Her friend was doing the same. "Dear Jesus," Izzy began. "Dear, dear Jesus, we are scared and if you just get us out of this we will be good and do nothing but good things forever. Bless me and you, the end."
"The end." her friend echoed.
Isobel looked at me, rolled her eyes and smiled...OK so maybe not THAT much give and take.
Isobel has had friends for as long as any of us can remember. Her thronging masses, her disciples, her underlings. It was only after seeing Despicable Me that I started calling them her minions. They are the nameless horde...until now.
She was wandering around the other day using one of the myriad remotes we have around here (functional and non-functional alike!) as a cell phone. She has done this for as long as we can remember too. Talking to someone in her usual pleasant manner.
"Look, I'm way too busy to do that. No you do it. No YOU do it. What did I give you the job for if you can't do it?"
She went on like this for a while and she was beginning to get hot under the collar. Slamming the door to the toy cupboard and holding the phone away from her ear, like someone would do when someone on the other end is prattling on and on.(Don't act like you don't know what I mean)
And then it happened...
"If you aren't going to do it, you can just go home." (silence as though listening to the other person speak)
"Dammit Gloria, just get it done."
Wait what? Who?
"Who is Gloria?" I asked.
She just smiled a kind of smile that defies description. That 'Cat who ate the Canary' kind of smile.
"Isobel, who is Gloria?" I asked once more.
She let out a long slow breath and said, "Someone who won't have a job soon."
With that she dropped the remote/cell phone and walked out of the room.
Well at least we got to know her name before she was banished...This is an important step for Izzy, she'll now have somebody to finger when her room looks like a disaster.
"I told Gloria to clean up n there but you just can't get good help anymore can you?"
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