fatherjamie

Huh

2011-07-26T19:08:00.000-07:00

Sofia: Do you want to have fun, Zara?
Zara: No thank you.
Sofia: Come on, Zara, do you want to have fun?
Zara: No thank you.
Sofia: You *don't* want to have fun?
Zara: I don't like fun.

Chocolate Pancakes

2011-07-23T09:56:00.000-07:00

Sofia said she wanted pancakes with chocolate milk instead of regular milk, so I said how about chocolate pancakes, and mixed some recipes together to get the "Fristrom Blend" -

2 cups flour
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup cocoa (I'll increase this next time - I would have liked them a bit more chocolatey)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 cup whole milk
2 eggs
2 tbsp butter melted & slightly cooled

Mix the dry ingredients in one bowl, mix the eggs & wet in another, combine, wooden spoon, batter will be lumpy, etc.
Might consider adding some vanilla next time too.

Anyway, I was a freakin' hero.

Role-playing with kids part X

2011-04-18T10:41:00.001-07:00

Ok, more advice on how to role-play with kids, using my sample-size of one:
Role-playing & collaborative storytelling with Sofi is such a crapshoot. Sometimes, she's incredibly creative. And just recently, on Saturday, we played That's Drama, and it went pretty well, with Hedwig & Sirius Black rescuing the Weasley family from some dark wizards. "That's Drama is the best game ever," Sofia said after. Aw. She couldn't wait to play again.

Then, yesterday,
Me: "Okay, so Hermoine is surrounded by three dark wizards - 'We have you now,' they say."
Sofia (shaking): "Try a different way."
Me: "Too scary? Okay - um - she notices somebody's following her ... she's not sure who it is."
Sofia: "Who is it?"
Me: "It's Draco Malfoy. But Hermoine doesn't know that."
Sofia: "Try a different way."
Me: "Ugh. Okay. Um. Hermoine sneezes. She thinks she's catching a cold."
Sofia: "Try a different way."
Me: "What? Why?"
Sofia: "I don't want her to get a cold."
Me: "Okay, what do you want to happen?"
Sofia: "I don't know."
Me: (Exasperated.) "I have to cook dinner now."
Obviously not her fault, but it burns me out. In hindsight, she wasn't using TADW as it's supposed to be used - you're supposed to use it to stop the game from being ruined, not on a whim - and simply asking her, "Really? It'll ruin the game for you if Hermoine catches a cold?" might have saved things.

What I don't know is how to tap into that incredible creativity consistently - sometimes the muse strikes her, I guess. But usually she's got her internal critic turned to 11.

Something that works sometimes, when she's in "I don't know" mode, is giving her choices, like a Choose Your Own Adventure:
"Well, do you want to fight, do you want to talk, or do you want to run away?"
"Well, do you want to investigate inside, or do you want to go back?"

Another thing that works sometimes is asking her, Otherkindish, "What's something bad that could happen?" If she picks the bad thing it's usually not going to upset her.

Let's Face It, This Is Really Just A Diary I Keep Online

2011-04-18T10:35:00.001-07:00

We've been doing a thing for a while now. "Hands up who loves mama?" "Hands up who loves dada" because everyone, even Zara can raise their hands.
This morning, a first:
Mama: Hands up who loves mama.
(Everyone puts their hands up.)
Dada: Hands up who loves Sofi.
(Everyone puts their hands up.)
Zara: Wah wah wuv dada.
(She puts her hand up.)

A first

2011-04-06T08:11:00.000-07:00

Last night While changing z's diaper:
z: I love mommy.
That's possibly her first sentence.
Me: you love mommy?
Z raises hand.

Zara-English Dictionary

2011-03-26T16:36:00.000-07:00

Thank you: Ank oo
Sofi: Pofie
Waffle: Wahwah
Tinkerbell: Inkbell
Wall-E: Wall-E

Collaborative Storytelling Elsewhere

2011-01-21T10:10:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've done the collaborative storytelling thing with Sofia - just read a story that inspires me to start again. It's my bad! - the sequels to our stories about our cats got complicated with a new character every night... - and I got storyteller burnout or something.

The last collaborative stories I did with Sofi were story games...we played several sessions of Archipelago II, which is great for playing with kids (it's probably great for adults, too, but I haven't tried it yet) about a teen witch and her knight friend living in Toledo in medieval times. Again, after a while I got burned out and wanted to play with different characters, and our next couple of games (a mixture of Archipelago II and Once Upon A Time that I hacked together) were fun but Sofi didn't want to come back for more - maybe because we created new characters each time.

I am weak. When I have something that works, I should stick with it longer, until Sofi gets bored, not me. I should find ways to make it interesting for myself, instead of starting over from scratch.

Anyhow, links:

The article

Archipelago II

Once Upon A Time + Archipelago

The Adventures of Zoe and Zippy

I'm the Worst Dad

2010-12-06T18:01:00.000-08:00

Sofia just said so. This is for giving her a timeout after she made Zara cry.
"Zara started it!"

Wise beyond her years

2010-11-07T18:06:00.000-08:00

Sofia: how many days until Christmas?
Dad: about fifty
Sofia: I wish...I wish it was thirty days.
Dad: as long as you're wishing, why not make *every* day Christmas?
Sofia: Because then I'd get sick of Christmas.

Not so broken anymore

2010-11-03T11:26:00.000-07:00

We've been sleeping. Yay!

We're Broken

2010-10-13T14:47:00.000-07:00

Well, in the long run, it did work - Zara sleeps through the night now. This is probably because we let her cry it out, not because we put her in Sofia's room. But who knows.

The bad news is WE can't sleep through the night. Both of us keep waking up at strange hours. Broken. Broken. Broken.

Kids In The Same Room?

2010-09-28T11:19:00.000-07:00

I read somewhere, in one of those many how to make your kids actually sleep books, that they sleep better if they're in the same room. So, at my wit's end last week, I moved Zara's crib into Sofi's room. (Took all evening - disassembling and reassembling.)

Did it work?

Hell no. Such a mistake.

She cried more than ever. Well, maybe not *ever*, but a lot.

The next few days were torture. Sometimes one of us would even sleep in Sofi's bed so Zara would stop crying. And eventually we did what we should have done in the first place, let her cry it out, sleep train her.

And...we've gotten two good nights of sleep since then. Touch wood. (And when Zara did cry, Sofia didn't wake up, so that was good too.) So maybe this is going to work out after all. But if I had it to do all over again...

Collaborative Bedtime Story Prime

2010-06-19T20:23:00.001-07:00

Sofi: What's that thing you like in stories?
Jamie: You mean conflict?
Sofi: Yeah, make conflict!

So tonight's bedtime story had all the family pets (there are like a dozen of them now because Sofi insists on adding a new one every time) arguing over who would get to eat the last of the food (watermelon & cheese) - Harta the cat nearly ate Glitter the girl mouse.

But Hearts the spider had the most fiendish plan - while Mama & Dada were off buying gorceries she wanted to siphon their bank accounts into her own. She asked Sofia to open the filing cabinet to see if she could find Dada's password to his computer. Sofia was pretty excited about this. (Hearts said, "All the watermelon you can eat!") Then they started hacking Dada's computer. But he came home and caught them in the act. "Sofia, what are you doing?" Dada said in a stern voice.

Sofi: I don't like this story.
Dada: You didn't like getting caught?
Sofi: Erase. Erase it. Erase the plan.
(We hadn't written anything down.)
Dada: I've got an idea for a good ending.
Sofi: Erase.
Dada: How about Sofia says, "We were trying to steal all your money, Dada." And he says, "I'm so proud of you for telling the truth! You're just like George Washington."
Sofi: Erase.
Dada: Ok.

So - actually - instead - when Hearts the spider asks Sofia to open the filing cabinet, Sofia says "No way!"
"Really?" Hearts asks. "You could get all the watermelon you could eat!"
Sofia says "No way!"
And they all lived happily ever after.

Collaborative Bedtime Story

2010-06-08T20:44:00.001-07:00

Once upon a time, in our home, at night, Zippy the Half-Siamese Girl Cat wanted a nice, soft place to sleep. But Cathy the Mommy and Jamie the Daddy and Sofia the Little Girl wouldn't let Zippy sleep on their beds. So Zippy looked around and saw that someone had left the door to Zara the Baby's room open. She went inside and saw Zara the Baby asleep in her crib. It looked so soft and nice, so Zippy the Half-Siamese Girl Cat jumped up on the bookshelf and then into the crib.

But she woke up Zara the Baby, who started to cry, and Cathy the Mommy got up and went into Zara's room.

"What the heck?" Cathy the Mommy said. "Zippy, get out of Zara's crib."

And Zippy said, "No way. This is my crib now."

And Cathy the Mommy picked Zippy up and threw her outside in the rain.

Zippy meowed at the door. Jamie the Daddy said, "The cat's outside. Should I let her in?"

And Cathy the Mommy said, "No, let's watch an episode of Lost instead."

So they did.

Zippy the Half-Siamese Girl Cat realized nobody was going to let her in, so she climbed up the maple tree, jumped on the roof, and crawled onto the skylight and tried to scratch through it. But it wouldn't budge.

Cathy the Mommy went to the kitchen to get a snack, and heard the scratching on the roof. "Jamie, it sounds like some branches fell on the roof, can you go get them off?"

So Jamie the Daddy went out in the rain, put up a ladder, climbed up on the roof, and when he saw Zippy he was so shocked he fell off the roof and landed with a thud on the ground.

Sofia the Little Girl heard the thump and ran outside. "Daddy, what the heck?" She said.

"Can you tell mommy to call a hospital?" Jamie the Daddy asked.

So she did, and Cathy the mommy called the hospital, and an ambulance came, and Zoe the Calico Girl Cat and Glitter the Girl Mouse came out to watch. Jamie the Daddy said from his stretcher, as they put him in the ambulance, "Hey Zoe and Glitter, can you watch the kids?" And the ambulance took Jamie the Daddy and Cathy the Mommy to the hospital.

"This is my big chance," Glitter the Girl Mouse said. She got some cheese from the refrigerator and sat down to watch TV.

"This is my big chance," Zippy the Half-Siamese Girl Cat said. She crawled across the roof to the chimney and jumped in, and crawled out of the fireplace, covered in soot. Then she went back into Zara's room and jumped back into Zara's crib.

But Zoe saw her. "Hey Glitter," Zoe said. "Zippy's in Zara's bed! We've got to stop that bad cat."

But Glitter said, "No way. I just want to eat cheese and watch TV."

So Zoe went into Zara's room by herself and said to Zippy -you better get out of Zara's bed you bad cat. In cat language that sounds like "meow meow meow."

And Zippy said -No way, this is the best bed. Which in cat language sounds like "Meow meow meow." And she tried to curl up and go to sleep.

And Zoe meowed and meowed and hissed and meowed.

Zippy opened her eyes and said -Do you mind? Trying to sleep here. Which in cat language sounds like "Meow meow."

And Zoe said -You can sleep in my bed. Which in cat language sounds like "Meow meow."

And Zippy said -Your bed? That little folded up bit of blanket on the hard floor of the living room? It's so uncomfortable! Which in cat language sounds like "Meow meow meow."

And Zoe said -You know what? I'll make you a bed.

And she went and got some pillows and blankets and brought them back into Zara's room and arranged them on the floor to make a nice bed. Zippy watched and thought it did look like a nice bed. -All right, I'll give it a try.

And she did, and it was a nice bed, and she fell asleep.

And the doctor said that Jamie the Daddy's arm was broken and he put it in a cast and sent Jamie and Cathy home. And they made Glitter turn off the TV and thanked Zoe for watching the kids.

Coming soon: what happens when Glitter decides she wants a mouse hole the day before they throw a big birthday party for Zara?

Need vs want

2010-06-02T06:48:00.000-07:00

Mom: don't you want to go potty?
Sofia: no
mom: you look like you need to go
Sofia: I need to go but I don't want to go

And up til there I thought needs were a subset of wants.

RPG for five year olds

2010-03-16T23:48:00.001-07:00

One of those posts that's so nerdy I'm almost embarrassed to put it up.

I was looking for something to replace or at least spice up Sofia & my Warhammer Quest games (getting bored of fighting the same orcs & minotaurs over and over) and seem to have hit upon it. I was looking for something both simple enough for a 5 year old and DMless. Although Sofia and I used to play a diet Universalis when she was younger she stopped liking it, but googling around I seem to have discovered close to the perfect solution: Mythic.

Although the rulebook is pretty long (and it has some lame cheesecakeish artwork) the core rules really could be boiled down to: ask yes/no questions and roll on a table. Someone into tactical or power gaming (wait, that's usually me) wouldn't be satisfied--in fact, I was really skeptical that it would work--but for collaborative storytelling where each of us gets to "be" a character, and we can play in any genre we want (it ended up being Last Airbender fan fiction, but that's ok), and play fast, it was great. After dinner and before bedtime we beat the giant spider, rescued the avatar and his companions from its webs, and saved an earthbender town from a fire nation sniper. Sofi's character ended up badly burned and Saka's still missing - a hook for a later game session. We used some of the maps and minis from other games, including WHQ, just for show and tell. I have to admit I mostly drove (I'd keep asking Sofi, "What do you think should happen now?" "I don't know! I have no idea!") but occasionally she stepped up (Jamie: "How many fire nation soldiers should there be? An army? A squad?" Sofia: "ONE! Just one!" ...she found the exploit...)

Afterwards I was, of course, tempted to "improve" the rules - I hate tables and if I can find some cool system of die-rolling against a threshold or opposed roll to get away from using a table then I'm usually much happier. (When Sofi & I play WHQ it's modded so I don't have to look at the creature's stat cards all the time.) But after dicking around with some experiments I decided I was wasting my time - it's just one table, after all, which one can keep a printout of handy...and would a different die-rolling system really make it any more fun?

Butter

2010-01-21T08:45:00.000-08:00

Sofia likes a big pat (or "chunk" as we call it) of butter on her waffle, like in the picture on the syrup bottle. She eats around it until its the only part left and then eats it in one bite. (Got to admit, sounds pretty good. Mmm, butter.) Today I was making her waffle before I had my coffee and spread her butter chunk out of habit.

Sofia (squeals): Why did you spread my butter?

Dad: Oh! I'm sorry. Here, you can have another chunk of butter.

Sofia: That's just a waste of butter!

Dad: I bet it's delicious. Extra butter.

Sofia: But why?

Dad: I forgot. Years of habit. I'm sorry.

Sofia: I don't want to look at you right now.

I know you're not supposed to laugh when your kids say something but I couldn't help it.

Some Nights Nothing Works

2009-12-07T21:48:00.000-08:00

Things I tried to soothe Zara tonight:

- the "treatment" - swaddle with one arm free (to bite on), put in the car seat, put in the bathroom with the lights on and the water running. This usually works. Zara enjoys her treatments. It worked for a while tonight but then...it didn't.

- walking around with her. Usually works. My back usually gets tired before she starts crying again, but this time - no.

- giving her her first solid food! Cathy suggested this, in case Z. got hungry before she got back from her girls night out. It seemed to work for a while - she enjoyed each mouthful and lunged for the spoon when I brought her more. (Organic brown rice cereal - we're being a little more health conscious with Z. than with S.) I taped it so Cathy could watch. But, eventually, no mas.

- tried a second treatment. No dice.

- Baby Einstein - this used to work great with Sofi, and it seemed to work with Z for a good solid ten minutes or so, but then...

- playing her videos of her mama on the Flip. Also interesting for a minute or two.

Finally, I gave up. She's crying in the bedroom now...

I've been blogging a lot less about Z than about Sofi - I think a big part of that things are a lot less eventful. Things are so much easier this time around, usually. We know what we're doing and Z's a pretty easy baby. No more blogging about all our experiments, what works and what doesn't....

Sofia's constant

2009-11-15T18:38:00.000-08:00

Sofi likes the number guessing game I taught her which is supposed to teach her the value of log n searches but she hasn't quite figured that out yet. "Is it 1?" "Higher" "Is it 2?"

Every now and then I pick pi just to mess with her.

Today it was my turn to guess:

Jamie: is it 13?

Sofia: lower

Jamie: is it 9?

Sofia: higher

Jamie: is it 11?

Sofia: higher

Jamie: is it 12?

Sofia: higher

Jamie: are you sure? more than 12 and less than 13? 12 and a half?

Sofia: it's pi!

Jamie: it can't be pi, pi is between 3 and 4

Sofia: it's cupcake!

4-year old reading level

2009-09-13T21:14:00.000-07:00

Damn! I've been making Sofi read me her bedtime story the last few nights. (Negotiation goes like this: Sofi: I'm too tired, I don't wanna. Jamie: How about I read you first story and you read me second? Sofi: Ok. Later: Jamie: Ok, what are you going to read me? Sofi: I don't wanna. Jamie: But you promised! Etc.) Anyhow, she just made it through Go, Dog, Go! with very little help. Jamie: You know the word for water?! Sofi: There's water in the picture! That's what gave me the clue.

Old Man

2009-09-10T19:10:00.001-07:00

Jamie: They didn't have car seats when I was a baby.

Sofia: Why not?

Jamie tries to explain.

Sofia (drinks her milk): Did they have cups when you were a baby?

tricks

2009-08-29T07:11:00.000-07:00

I've got two tricks for soothing Zara. One is to put her low on the blanket when I swaddle her, so the blanket covers her mouth but not her nose. Then I give her her pacifier. This way, when she tries to spit out her pacifier, the blanket catches it. A good trick for anyone who's wished they could just tape the pacifier to their baby's face...
Another trick, when she refuses the pacifier, is to take her into the bathroom and run the sink. I guess the sound of running water is kind of white-noisy, kind of calming, because she often stops crying when I turn the water on, like a switch has been thrown. I discovered this one by accident, washing her pacifier one day.

Allowance in hindsight

2009-08-17T09:39:00.001-07:00

So I mentioned we've been giving Sofi an allowance even though she's only four. For it's intended purpose, to have an answer other than just "No" when she asks if she can have something, it's been freakin' great:

"Can I have this stamp?" "You can spend your allowance on it if you want."

"Let's get the yogurt crunch bites!" "You can spend your allowance on it if you want."

"No, don't return the pot!" "It's thirty dollars. Do you want to spend your allowance on it? Oh, you don't have that much? Too bad."

For whatever reason, she totally accepts this as a reasonable answer, and it silences her, whereas before, we'd keep getting the repeated whining "Please? Please? Please!"

On the other hand, she's terrible at taking care of it. Whenever she wants to buy something she can't remember where she put her money, and has shown no signs of learning to be careful. I suppose she'll learn eventually.

And on the gripping hand, $5 a week was too much. $2-3 probably would have been about right. That very first purchase - Flock! - I should have gone in with her on it or something. What I've been doing to compensate is to only give her her allowance each week if she actually remembers.

Nightmare

2009-08-12T10:31:00.000-07:00

Two nights ago, dreamed that Cathy was pregnant again, with twin boys.

Honestly, I don't know how parents with 3 kids do it. What if all kids need something simultaneously?

Vinegar

2009-08-06T20:47:00.000-07:00

I told Sofi she'd probably like vinegar because both her parents like it.

"I don't even know if I want to try it," she said. "I mean..." (holding out one hand) "do I want to try it?" (holding out the other.) "Or not?"

It kills me.

I guess you had to be there.

"Tell Me About Your Picture"

2009-08-05T09:55:00.001-07:00

I heard you're not supposed to ask "What are you drawing?" but "Tell me about your picture."

I don't think it really matters. Not with Sofi, anyway. She doesn' t seem perturbed that I never know what it is she's drawing.

Mitigated Cursing

2009-07-30T09:18:00.001-07:00

I've gotten really good at saying "Dang it!" instead of "Damn it!" and "What the heck?" instead of WTF.

Sofi took to "Dang it" like a fish to water, but only just now did I hear her say, "What the heck?" I burst out laughing. What's so funny, she wanted to know.

Zara

2009-06-12T15:25:00.001-07:00

Ugh. Not in a blogging mood. Let's hit the highlights.

The Doctor wanted us to induce because she thought the baby was getting too big. (Later we found out she's going on vacation next week - maybe part of the reason she wanted us to induce was so she'd be here...) Monday rolls around, we set the alarm for 6 AM, call the hospital from bed, and see if they have a slot. Yes they do, can we be there by 7? Um, ok.

When she starts pushing, Cathy can't really feel it. Maybe the epidural's too strong. After an hour and half of trying, Cathy suggests turning the epidural off. The exact conversation is lost in time - Cathy claims it was the nurse's idea - I think maybe the nurse was the first to mention that some people do that, it was later that Cathy said "Maybe we should turn the epidural off" and the nurse responded with an enthusiastic OK!

Word of advice: if you're doing back labor aka the baby is posterior aka "sunny side-up" DO NOT turn off the epidural. Because it hurts. A lot.

She started feeling it, pushing well, but eventually the pain got too much and she couldn't do it anymore, so we got on the queue to have the epidural turned back on, which took a while, and even once it was on it took another half hour before she was feeling good, which left us fifteen minutes to push before our three hours were up and a C-section became the recommended choice.

"So you blame me for the C-Section?" Cathy asks. Like the C-Section is a bad thing. I'm just reporting what happened. We made some choices, ("What choices did YOU make," Cathy asks. Fine, she made some choices.) stuff happened, nobody knew. We didn't know for sure the baby was sunny side-up this time, either.

Anyhow - C-Section. Although there's a little wall up to prevent me from having a direct view of the gore, there's a mirror on the other side of the room I can pretty easily sneak peeks from, and I can see the cannister where they collect the blood they're suctioning away. So when they've got umbilical cord snaking everywhere like so much intestine and the cannister is at the 500 ml mark I'm pretty freaked out. Trying to do the math in my head - aren't there 6 pints of blood in the human body? How many pints in a liter? Damn you metric system. But I don't ask, "Um, hey, is that much blood normal?" because I don't want to freak Cathy out, either.

After they have Zara out (the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck, apparently, another factor that must have made our delivery difficult) and by the time they get Cathy all sewed up the cannister is over the liter mark, and that doesn't even include the blood on the Doctor's smock and all over Cathy's belly, etc.

But, hey, I guess that's normal, because Cathy's fine, everything's fine, and all things considered I think this birth has gone smoother than the last. Cathy's able to use the bathroom, for example...

Zara: 7 lbs 15 oz, born 8:46 on 6/8/09.

Honesty time: with Sofi, I was like, "Wow, what a miracle, what a fantastic little person, look, she's so incredible, wow." With Zara it's like, "Huh. She's like Sofi but different. Can I go back to sleep now?" I'm probably going to have to delete or censor this blog when they get old enough to read...as long as I'm being honest, I'll also say I already have a favorite. One of the reasons I didn't want to have a second is I'd knew I'd have a favorite, that in my head I'd make Sophie's Choice, and now I've done it. But hey, maybe my favorite will change over time. And maybe the integrals of favoritism will balance out.

My memory is that newborns cry all the time, and that's not actually the case. Not even most of the time. Most of the time they sleep. Not so bad.

Overlake Hospital is pretty awesome. We like it better than Cedars-Sinai all in all. Bigger rooms; more attentive, competent nurses; better food. "It's like a little vacation," Cathy said. "I don't want to go back." My bed was pretty uncomfortable, like a sheet stretched over some metal coils.

Now that we're home, I don't know what we'd do if my mom and dad weren't here. Kill each other, I suppose. They've been entertaining Sofi and feeding us and cleaning up after us. We've been feeding and soothing Zara. We're having the same breast feeding problems we had with Sofi - milk not coming in, Zara losing weight, and so we're going to pump again (just helped Cathy set up the pump.) We'll have to supplement with formula, and part of me goes, yes! We'll be able to get more sleep!

On the sleep front, I realize although Cathy has it harder than me in almost every way, she does have one advantage: she can fall asleep in seconds flat. She just has to lie down and boom, she's snoring. Me, I lie there for an hour and then my cell phone in the other room beeps to indicate that its batteries are dead and I snap back awake. I'm also really bad at coming out of naps - groggy and surly and unable to move.

So far, Cathy's been in high spirits compared to last time; last time she was often like a surly mother bear, cooing over her young but when I approached or dared speak she'd menacingly growl. (If I ever want to get a laugh out of Cathy I just have to playact "here's mama with Sofi...(looks down) aww, coo iddy biddy coo coo aww...(looks up) GROWL!!!!) Not this time.

First

2009-05-30T14:17:00.001-07:00

Sofi just made her first videogame level.

She was drawing pictures of "goo castles" and asked me to make them the first levels for the goo castle game I'm going to make for her when I make it. I said I didn't think I'd have time to make her a goo castle game, and found myself wishing I had a PS3 and Little Big Planet to make some "goo castle levels" in. Then I remembered - hey, N+ has a level editor. We can make it in that. Maybe not as flexible as LBP, but Sofi seemed to like it.

Allowance

2009-05-30T11:58:00.000-07:00

Sofi's been asking me to buy the full version of "FLOCK!" for XBLA because she wants more levels. "The sheep game" she calls it. Apparently, she beat the whole trial while I wasn't even watching - I set her up with the first level and left. Lately it's her game of choice, playing the same levels of the trial over and over again.

I was about to cave and just get it for her (1200 points seems steep, oh great, now I'm one of those "this XBLA title is too expensive" wankers) when I thought maybe it's a good time to start an allowance. Some sites on the internet that I'm too lazy to look up right now agreed - as soon as a kid starts saying "I want that" it's okay to start an allowance.

Cathy's first reaction was that I was spoiling her. But no, spoiling her would be getting her whatever she wants whenever she wants it - an allowance is like a cap on spoilage.

We're starting at $5 a week, $1 more than the recommended amount for a 4-year old, because that way it'll only be 3 weeks until she can play "FLOCK!" So maybe we are spoiling her. A little.

"I can't wait!" she says.

Fatherhood 2.0 about to gold master

2009-05-28T23:16:00.000-07:00

T-minus 12 days until Zara. Of course, Sofi was a few days early, and Cathy is huge, so we're expecting it will be less than that. I am becoming filled with dread. Why did we do this again?Because Sofi wanted a sibling? Maybe we should have gotten her a pony instead.

I've been re-reading this blog from the beginning in the hopes that I'd have some useful advice for myself because I seem to have repressed most of my memories from the last time. Not much there. It's nice having the timeline, at least. After n-months we stopped co-sleeping. After n+m months we tried to let her cry it out, etcetera. My dread increases. I'd forgotten just how many months you have to go before you get to have a good night's sleep again. And then there's the arguing...we've had a pretty placid marriage for the last two years or so, but the bickering is already starting to pick up again and Zara's not even born yet.

The funniest thing was years ago I blogged about screwing up a high roast chicken because of my oven's UI. Almost the exact same thing happened a week ago, with our new oven. I don't think I've cooked a single roast chicken in the intervening years. Apparently whenever we get a new oven I decide I should roast a chicken and then screw it up. Different UI problem, this time: I thought I was turning off the kitchen timer but I actually turned off the whole oven.

Other posts of antiquity - complained about how common Sofi's name was. This time we checked the baby name voyager first, and Zara is downright rare. Good thing she's not a boy (well, we're 99% sure, anyhow) otherwise we couldn't resist Zachary, which not only is top 15 but our friend Chip has a Sophie & Zach as well.

I better get some sleep in the bank.

Entitlement?

2009-04-10T09:22:00.001-07:00

Every now and then I see an article or hear someone talk about 'entitlement' and images come forth of a spoiled teenager with a frown on their face because they don't have a cell phone like their friends or whatever.

In a nutshell: I'm a bad parent because Sofi has stuff we didn't have when we were kids and she takes it for granted. Huh? I'm a bad parent because Sofi has it better than we did?

This concept of 'entitlement' as a bad thing irritates me. Something I learned back when I got my psych degree - it's human nature to take for granted what you have; people, as a rule, tend to get used to their current situation. Which may be a good thing - it may be where progress, productivity, prosperity come from - you get used to what you have and you want to go to the next level. So you invent something. You work. And you create stuff for other people and get yourself more stuff. And then you get used to that. And so on. Capitalism 101 I guess.

I'm sure I feel more entitlement than my parents did - I feel entitled to the internet, to having stuff delivered to my home without having to go to a store, to a huge array of entertainment options, to a home heated to 69 degrees. And I'm sure Sofi will feel entitled to things I don't yet take for granted.

Another nice thing about people getting used to their situation - it works both ways. You have stuff taken away from you; say, for example, the stock market crashes and your net worth plummets. At first it sucks, but after a while you get used to the new baseline, and you're happy when it seems like the stock market may have hit bottom and be coming back.

These anti-entitlement people remind me of cantankerous old farts grumbling, "Quit your whining, you could live in a concentration camp or a third-world slum." I'm exaggerating a little - I do have respect for the people who can say "It's okay that I have no shoes, could be worse, could have no feet" - and sometimes I'll 'enjoy' a movie about poverty that reminds me just how good I have it.

But still, step the hell off, people.

Wow, just noticed that blogspot has a "monetize" button now. That's pretty awesome. "Push this button to make money." Maybe that's another thing Sofi will feel entitled to one day: push-button money.

Conventional Wisdom Questioned

2009-03-12T11:23:00.000-07:00

Playing devil's advocate here:

Sofi does like to whine. Conventional wisdom is that we're reinforcing the whining by giving in to it - I personally don't believe we do, we're usually pretty consistent about pointing out whining, ignoring it or saying "ask in a nice way." But if we ask a doctor or teacher what to do, they tell us, "You must not be consistent." I have a couple friends who have troubles with whiny daughters also, who also try the standard treatment and also have little success. I wonder - is the wisdom correct? Maybe whining is natural as wind or rain, not a habit that we're encouraging. Maybe whining is a symptom of another problem. I don't know. I just wonder.

Time outs are wonderful. No spanking necessary. And here I'm really playing devil's advocate, I don't actually believe this, but it does occur to me, seeing Sofi *so* mortified by time outs, that maybe they're a kind of torture even worse than corporal punishment: a twisted psychological torture of some kind. Just musing aloud, there.

Deep Conversations

2009-02-13T15:57:00.000-08:00

Sofi: Who builded the universe?
Jamie: Um, nobody knows for sure. Some say nobody built it, it just happened.
Sofi: Nooooo.... (in the tone of voice that says she knows I'm being silly.)
Jamie: Ok, who built the universe then?
Sofi: I don't know, but I know somebody did!
Jamie: How do you know?
Sofi: Because I'm smart like that.

(A priori knowledge? Or are they already indoctrinating her in preschool?)

Sofi: When will I be ten years old?
Jamie: Do you want to be ten years old?
Sofi: Yes.
Jamie: You know, when you're ten, you have a lot more rules. You'll have to do a lot of chores, for one thing.
Sofi: I don't want to do a lot of chores.
Jamie: So enjoy being four while it lasts.
Sofi: When will I be four again?
Jamie: Huh?
Sofi: When will I be four again?
Jamie: You mean, will you be four again after you're ten?
Sofi: Uh-huh.
Jamie: You won't be. Once you're ten you can never be four again.
Sofi: Why?!
Jamie: That's just the way it works. You can't go back to being three, for example.
Sofi: Why?!
(Repeat xxx.)
Jamie: There are some good things about being ten. You'll be able to read, and see new movies, and play new games.
Sofi: I want to be four again.

It's A Girl!

2009-01-22T17:17:00.001-08:00

I think this is the first time I've blogged about Sofi 2.0 - just got the ultrasound today and the tech was "pretty sure" it's a girl but not positive. ("Look at how she's clamping her legs together, and the umbilical cord is in the way, but I don't see any boy parts.")

Cathy was pretty sure it was a boy because she was so miserable for the start of the pregnancy - we've even been calling the baby Zachary - but lately she's been glowing and happy so I started to think we were wrong. Sofi was disappointed too - although she used to be ambivalent ("What do you want, a little brother or little sister?" a nurse asked her once, and she answered, "Whatever it is!") we managed to brainwash her into wanting her brother Zachary.

Now we need a name...

First Names, Conversation...

2008-12-28T23:20:00.000-08:00

I had a friend in college who called his parents by his first names. Thought it was the weirdest thing that his parents taught him to use their first names - so weird, that I made the behaviorist parents in my novel who help screw up their child do the same thing.

Wouldn't you know it - I don't know why Sofi likes to do it, but she's started calling us by our first names. For almost the whole first four years of her life we were mama and dada, but now we're Jamie and Cathy. At least when she talks to other people we're still "My Dad" and "My Mom"...we've gently tried to coax her into calling us mama and dada again but haven't pushed it.

So, that friend in college, need to re-evaluate. Maybe it wasn't his parents at all, maybe it was just his thing.

Had this conversation tonight:

Sofi: I really wanted Cathy to use this bathroom.

Me: Well, it's too late now. A lot of times in life we don't get what we want. I know I don't always get what I want.

Sofi: What did you want that you didn't get?

Me: Um...um...um...I want to eat junk food all the time.

Sofi: That isn't healthy.

Me: And I wish I never had to sleep.

Sofi: I like to sleep. Sleeping helps you grow.

School Districts

2008-11-05T11:37:00.000-08:00

I tried to tell myself school districts didn't matter.
"Gold in, gold out," I said. "Sofi will do well anywhere. Studies have shown."
We found a nice house in a nice neighborhood with wainscotting, vaulted ceilings, gas stove, enough separation between the TV room and the bedrooms so I can play Rock Band while Sofi's asleep...
Just one problem: good high school, but the middle and elementary are just sort of marginally above average.
BUT - "What do these test scores even mean?" I said to myself. "It probably just means the neighborhoods are affluent, and they're sending the potential-high-earning children of high-earning adults to these schools."
BUT - maybe that's why we parents care - don't want our young ones falling in with a "bad crowd" - let's send them to schools were cocaine is the drug of choice and everyone grows up to be doctors and lawyers, not one of those white trash marijuana-predominant schools.
BUT - in elementary school, does it even matter? The differences between 'bad crowd' and 'good crowd' probably don't show until sixth grade or so...)
BUT - I went to good schools. Shouldn't Sofi have the same advantages I had?
And...at that point I lose the argument with myself. Guess we'll keep looking.

Election

2008-11-04T16:46:00.000-08:00

Cathy's had the election coverage on all day.
Sofi asked, "Do you want O-bama or McCain to win? I want both."

That Wasn't So Hard, After All

2008-10-25T12:51:00.000-07:00

Took under an hour. Sofi was very excited, and actually willing to play this one (you place hearts by moving the stick and pressing the A button). Whew.

Sigh

2008-10-25T12:03:00.000-07:00

Entranced by World of Goo, Sofi wanted to make a game where it was hearts instead of goo balls and it didn't matter how many goo balls you got, you still get a flag at the end.

So I thought it would be fun to make a game together - had her draw a heart, scanned it in, used the Schizoid engine to let her drive her heart around with the joystick.

Either she'll be excited that her art is in a game, I thought, or she'll be disappointed that it isn't her Vision. Hopefully the former.

But - "That's not the way it's supposed to be," she said. "They're supposed to stick together. I don't like this game." And then she curled up in a fetal position and looked sad.

"That'll be a lot of work," I said. Pulling out the programmer veto.

More sulking.

Sigh. I got myself into this mess, right? Made her think she'd get one thing and then gave her another. Like saying I'd give her a pony and then giving her a toy pony. "I'll see what I can do."

Mama Come Here!

2008-10-16T16:41:00.000-07:00

For the most part Sofi's been sleeping really well since we started leaving her light on. And when she does sneak into her bed, she does it without waking us up, which is good.

A weird game she's started playing lately when she wants mama - she'll sit and cry and scream in the room she's in rather than go into the room she knows mama is in...testing? Do we need to ride out the extinction burst here or is there something else we can do?

Oh well.

Catching up...she's much more outgoing than she used to be - she likes to talk to people and tell them that she likes to fly on planes and that she's been to Disneyland and saw Ariel and that she has friends like Hyunjin and Zelda and that she's going to be a butterfly cat for Halloween. Very cute. She loves *World of Goo* - for a while her favorite thing to do was to watch me play. Now that we're almost at the end and I'm having a hard time beating the last few levels and the OCD challenges she's lost a little interest - but for a while there she'd draw put World of Goo elements in her drawings - "Here's Ariel, and here's the Goo Balls."

Other things - she wants to hear princess stories, but I don't think she's ready for the Disney movies yet, so I've been downloading the real versions of the internet and reading those. When she sees the Disney version of the Little Mermaid, I wonder if she'll be confused at the end. "Huh? She actually got to marry the prince? She didn't turn into a spirit of the air? Huh?" Probably not.

Last night she said she had a nightmare about a princess. Beauty and the Beast, even just as text, may be too much for her...

Sleep! Sleep! Sleep!

2008-09-24T13:30:00.000-07:00

We had a couple months of peace, with the *Sleepless In America* method, but then we simply lost the will to make Sofi nap anymore. And then the sleeplessness started right back in again. After being woken in the middle of the night, five nights in a row, Cathy tried a new tactic: "No chocolate milk unless you sleep through the night." Even that didn't work. But then, three nights ago, Sofi insisted I leave her lamp on. Night light + candles not bright enough. I said, "Okay, if you promise to not wake us up in the middle of the night." She promised. And...we've had three nights of full sleep since then, for the first time in weeks. It's kind of weird that she's sleeping with the light on...but it seems to work.

Spoilers

2008-08-27T10:23:00.001-07:00

Lately all Sofi wants is for us to make puppet shows for her with her cats. We run out of ideas rapidly: sometimes we recap the story of the day, sometimes I tell little fables with morals (much like her episodes of Kai-Lan), but lately (and I got this idea from Bill) I've been acting out the Hobbit and just started into The Fellowship of The Ring.

I feel a little guilty that when she's old enough to enjoy them for the first time they'll have already been spoiled...but on the other hand I don't remember a time when I didn't know what the story of The Hobbit was, so these books do hold up on the re-telling...

More Exact Rating System

2008-08-17T16:17:00.000-07:00

It was that once-in-a-blue-moon I clicked on a Google ad - whattheyplay.com, a site that tells parents more accurately than ESRB what the content of a game is. I thought, "That's really cool, but I'm pretty darn informed with videogames - I wonder if they have the same thing for movies? In particular, I wonder if they have some system that would separate something like *The Little Mermaid* or *Lion King* (which I feel is too violent for Sofi) from say *Wall-E* or *The Aristocats* (movies that don't quite cross the line) and I discovered www.kids-in-mind.com, which is excellent, breaking down movies into sex / violence / profanity and giving *Wall-E* a 2 for violence but *Little Mermaid* and *Lion King* 3. The only problem is some older Disney movies aren't listed yet: where's *Sleeping Beauty* and *Fantasia*? Is Sofi ready for those yet?

More Evidence of Game Designer Gene

2008-07-30T19:47:00.000-07:00

At Soccer camp, Sofi didn't want to play "Buffalos and Cowboys" (where the kids were Buffalos running from the Cowboy coaches) or "Big fish and Little Fish" (where...you guessed it...) - she came up with "Fly Butterfly!" which is where the kids are butterflies and the coaches: birds.
"You better ask Alex if you can play that next time," I said. "Otherwise he won't know you want to."
So she did - with a little help interpreting from me. And he agreed - so at age 3, she's already invented a game that was played and enjoyed by others. Just a total conversion mod at this point, but she's way ahead of her dad.

Random other thing - I'm not sure what the etymology of the name is, but a while ago Sofi decided her name was going to be "Bocess" - the "cess" is from "princess", I don't know where the "bo" comes from. She's become quite adamant lately that people call her that. Maybe it'll become her online handle.

Athletics

2008-07-30T10:14:00.000-07:00

Sofi's had her first swimming and soccer lessons the past couple weeks. I haven't witnessed the swimming because of work but was able to attend the soccer. She seems to enjoy swimming but soccer...not so much. (Like her dad.) When all the other kids are running to dribble and shoot their balls, she stays back and holds one of our hands and says "I don't want to play this one." Though we usually manage to coax her into doing something.

After yesterday's class, we asked her: "You did good at passing. Did you like passing?"
"No."
"What about trying to get the ball from the coach?"
"No."
But: "Do you want to do it again tomorrow?"
"Yes"
So she likes *something* about it, I guess.

Whoops

2008-06-02T18:38:00.000-07:00

Brett caught my egregious order-of-magnitude math error in the last post. Guess I'm back on the watch-kids-in-the-bath bandwagon.

Drowning Statistics

2008-06-01T17:54:00.001-07:00

Couldn't leave well enough alone.

One of the first statistics I found via Google is that there are about 10 children dying of drowning each year in Phoenix. Let's say half of them are under the age of five. And then say half of those were due to bathtub unattendance. (Which is conservative - again, most drowning occurs in pools.) Bringing us to around 3 a year.

There's 1.3 million people in Phoenix. So we could roughly say that there's 800K under-fives.

The question - how many of these under-fives are left unattended in the bath?

If we say that there are 1 in 100 children with "bad" parents in Phoenix, that's 8000 kids who bathe unattended, 3 of whom die each year. So...if you decide to be a "bad" parent this year and let your child bathe unattended regularly, that's a...1 in 2400 chance of losing your child. Per year of unattended bathing. Which is very rare...although I still wouldn't want to roll those dice there are probably bigger dangers which we can either do nothing about and/or are unconscious of.

But definitely a green light on leaving historically cautious and smart three or four year olds unattended for a minute or two, I figure. But, just to cover my ass, if you follow this advice I am in no way responsible for your dead kid.

Watch Kids In The Bath...?

2008-06-01T17:49:00.000-07:00

This blog post was the first hit when I searched for "watch kids in the bath" - before the various pages on drowning statistics, one of which advises that you shouldn't leave kids alone in the bath before the age of five. My own three-and- a-half-year old daughter seems like she should be perfectly safe in the bath: we've never seen her even attempt to dunk her head underwater, never seen her slip and fall in the tub. And she loves to take long baths, and she doesn't get to take as many as she likes, because neither of us like to be stuck in the bathroom with her for what can take up to an hour. (And we will leave her unattended for minutes at a time while we get towels, look for a book to read, etc. Hope nobody calls social services.)

So I'm of very mixed feelings about the whole thing.

On the one hand - drowning is leading cause of death after car accidents (and things you can't do anything about like cancer). It's a bigger killer than SIDS, poisoning, various illnesses.

On the other hand, 5 out of 6 cases are drowning in swimming pools. (Random side note - *Freakonomics* tells us that owning a swimming pool is more dangerous than owning a handgun.) So maybe bathtub drowning isn't that high on the list.

And, those websites that advise stringent risk-advoidance - they kind of have to be safety nazis, because if someone's four year old drowns they'll get sued.

And random news articles about infant drowning deaths are meaningless - purely anecdotal - no more meaningful than news articles about death by lightning strike.

On the other other hand, this is death, here. Even if the chances are 1 in 10,000 per bath would you want to roll those dice every time?

More Sleeplessness

2008-05-08T23:43:00.000-07:00

Sofi's mostly been really good since the last post - that book changed our lives - the key seems to have been exercise - make sure she gets a good deal of it and she'll sleep through the night.

BUT two nights ago, and tonight, she woke around 11 screaming and inconsolable. The reason I'm blogging right now was because after I went to get her, she insisted on having mama, and then wanted to go in our bed, but wanted me out. So I agreed to go away for a little while. But the screaming didn't stop...wait...she seems to have quieted down now.

Cathy thinks episodes like this are night terrors...I don't...she starts out crying, not screaming, and then ramps up, for one thing...for another, she's aware we're there...

And, speaking of exercise, one commonality tonight had with two nights ago - a *lot* of exercise. She walked all the way to the park. Too much of a good thing?

Catching Up

2008-04-24T21:42:00.000-07:00

Sofi hasn't been sleeping well in ages. There was a time she used to sleep through the night pretty consistently...at least for a few weeks there...but I don't remember when. I could go through the blog and try to figure it out, I suppose. For a while she'd come into our bed every night, then we managed to get her to stay in her own room - Cathy had a theory that too much *Warhammer Quest* was giving her nightmares, and so we put a ban on WHQ until she filled up a sticker chart with 8 "I slept through the night" stickers - which took her about three weeks to do, since she only slept through the night every two-three nights. Since read a book called *Sleepless in America* that I found in her preschool bookshelf, so we're trying some of that - the key changes being making sure she gets more exercise and being more serious about naptime. Sofi's schedule has resolved somewhere around:
- wake up around 7 AM
- breakfast at 8
- some kind of exercise in the morning
- lunch random, sometimes just grazes all day
- try to start naptime around 4, though if she falls asleep, she doesn't usually fall asleep until 5
- she sleeps from 5-6:30, which you'd think would make it harder to get to sleep at night, but-
- if we begin bedtime at 8 she'll usually be asleep around 9.

She's become strangely reluctant to use the potty. (Hmm, I wonder how embarrassing this blog will be for her when she's older...)

On the WHQ front, I'm now not the only father who plays it with their young daughter - when I told a friend about it he started playing it with his four year old, and she loves it too - he doesn't sanitize the way I do. She's really killin' monsters, not just making them "go away". Yes, my friends and I have "geekiest daughter" competitions. "My daughter's favorite thing to do is read the Monster Manual with me." "My daughter likes to hear the story of Harry the friendly hydra." ...

So, on the brains front: Sofi now knows some times 2 - the other day she said, "What's double two?" We didn't know what she was talking about at first. "What?" "Four!" "Really?" I asked. "What's double one?" "Two!" "What's double three?" "Six!" She didn't know two times four, but pretty impressive. I chalk it up to playing dice games. She still doesn't know what two plus three is, though.

She's also gotten pretty good at Set. She can find real sets with all cards in play, sometimes ones that I didn't even see myself.

Not bad for someone who can't put their shoes on the correct feet!

The Three Daily Battles

2008-03-30T15:29:00.000-07:00

1) Nap time
2) Dinner time
3) Bed time

Stuff

2008-03-12T15:05:00.000-07:00

We call nap time "Tent time" now - Sofi goes into her tent and will stay there voluntarily for a period of time, and sometimes even fall asleep.
"Have a nice tent time," I told her today.
"Have a nice you time," she said back.

As far the heavy hand of the father in the last story, the man-eating nice troll was all Sofi, probably inspired by the fairy tale book she got for Christmas. "Let's have a nice troll," she said. And then later, "The troll is eating people." "Eating people?" I asked. "That doesn't sound very nice. Chewing them up and swallowing them?" She said yes. So we ran with it. The obvious me contribution was "Restaurants are expensive."

The really-stripped-down Universalis - I ask her, "What kind of story?" and she always says, "A fairy tale!" and then we might negotiate. "How about a modern fairy tale with cars and houses instead of horses and castles," I'll say. (My standard Universalis opening move.) And then I'll ask what it's about and who's in it, and then we're ready to frame the first scene. "Where's the first scene?" And I'll let her run with it until she runs out of ideas and then usually do some kind of patching-up to try to make what she's done so far make some kind of sense. No dice, no tokens.

But we've also been playing Warhammer Quest, which is awesome - we used to play when she was 2, just building the dungeon and moving guys around in it - a couple weeks ago I introduced monsters - and at first she wasn't too crazy about it. "Why are there spiders?" But now she's like, "I want to hit the monster with my go away monster stick!" and "If we run out of energy I'll use this and we'll get our energy back. Like coffee." We cheat - the dungeon's half the size it's supposed to be. We've been TPK'd once ("We all ran out of energy and fell asleep.") and won once.

Other, activities: paper helicopters. Playing Set (she doesn't have to find actual sets, just matches).

BTW - Mark - just gave Dwarf Fortress another shot. The first time I just didn't get it and gave up. This time I used the tutorial. Jesus what a game.

I've got to admit, the reason I keep finding new activities for her isn't because she gets bored - it's because I get bored. She'd probably be happy playing Set for four hours straight. No ADD here.

Father Daughter Fiction Collaboration #3

2008-03-05T18:20:00.001-08:00

Bonus 200th Post!

*The Restaurant Troll*

Mama and dada and sofi were at home.
Mama said she wanted to go to a restaurant.
Sofi said she wanted to go to a restaurant, too.
Dada said restaurants are expensive.
Sofi said they should go to the restaurant and ask people there for money.
Dada said OK.
So they drove to the restaurant.
At the restaurant, a nice troll was in the kitchen, eating people. He chewed them up and swallowed them, and then they were in his tummy. Then the people made a big hole in his tummy to get out.
Dada and mama and Sofi got to the restaurant and said they wanted to eat. But first they had to ask people for money.
People came out of the kitchen and dada asked them for money.
They said they couldn't give him any money because they just escaped from a troll's tummy.
Sofi said they should send the troll to Sydney.
The troll came out of the kitchen and asked if he heard her right. Did she really want to send him to Sydney?
Yes, Sofi said.
The troll had always wanted to go to Sydney. But couldn't right now, because he had a big tummy ache, because of the hole in his tummy.
Luckily, mama had brought her knitting supplies, so she offered to sew up his tummy with yarn.
The troll wanted to know if it would hurt.
Maybe, mama said. Let's find out.
So mama started sewing up the troll.
The troll said it tickled.
When mama was done, the troll said he felt great, and he was ready to go to Sydney.
Dad wanted to know how they were going to send him to Sydney. That's expensive, dad said.
Sofi said they should ask for money again.
So they did.
And everyone was so happy to get rid of the troll who ate them that they were glad to chip in.
So mama, dada, and Sofi took the troll to the airport and put him on a plane to Sydney.

The end

Father-Daughter Fiction Collaboration #2

2008-02-17T08:54:00.001-08:00

The Dancing Princess

Once upon a time, in an old castle, in its old, empty ballroom, a princess sat and sighed.

"I love to dance," she said. "But there's no music, and nobody to dance with."

Her cat, Zippy, rubbed her legs.

"Will you dance with me, Zippy?" the princess asked.

"No," Zippy said. "Cats don't dance."

Her friend, a little girl named Sofi, walked into the room.

"Hi Sofi," the princess said. "Will you dance with me?"

"Okay," Sofi said.

"There's just one problem," the princess said. "There's still no music."

Sofi said, "We should make the music on."

"But this is an old castle without electricity," the princess said. "We can't just turn on the music."

Sofi said, "We should go to a new castle."

* * *

Leaving the castle gate, Sofi and the princess, both with backpacks, and their cat, set out to find a new castle.

"But I don't know where a new castle is," the princess said.

"I do," Sofi said.

"Then lead the way."

Sofi led them down the road. And they came to a bridge. And guarding the bridge was a big knight in black armor.

"You cannot cross this bridge," the knight said.

"But we're going to a new castle with music," Sofi said.

"I don't care. You still cannot pass."

"My favorite color is purple," Sofi said.

"My favorite color is black," the black knight said.

"That's a darker color," Sofi said.

"That's very true," the black knight said.

Just then, Zippy zipped across the bridge, running past the black knight.

"Wait!" the black knight yelled. "You cannot pass!" And he ran clumping after the cat.

"The bridge is clear now," the princess said. "Let's cross!"

So Sofi and the princess crossed the bridge. Later, Zippy, who had eluded the knight in his heavy black armor, caught up with them. And they found the new castle.

Inside the new castle there was music and a king. The king said, "What brings you to my castle?"

And the princess said, "We want to dance to music."

And the king said, "Well, dance away."

And they lived happily ever after.

The End

Father-Daughter Fiction Collaboration #1

2008-02-17T08:41:00.001-08:00

(Creating using a stripped-down version of Universalis.)

The Cat In The Kitchen

Once upon a time there was a chef named Nick who had a cat. The cat lived in the kitchen with Nick, which is against The Law, but the cat was very clean and Nick's restaurant was very popular.

One day, while Nick was cooking spaghetti for a customer, a health inspector named Catherine knocked on the door.

Nick opened the door a crack, saw that she was a health inspector, and sputtered, "Um, just a minute. Let me pick up in here a bit." And he slammed the door in her face before she could say a word.

While she knocked again, more and more loudly, Nick went to his cat, and said, "You must hide, kitty! The health inspector is here." And he put her in the cupboard under the sink.

Then he let Catherine in. She was not pleased. She took her clipboard, and started inspecting the restaurant - making sure the pantry was clean; that an "Employees Must Wash Hands" sign was posted by the restroom; that the proper health and safety notices were properly displayed.

As Nick watched her inspect, he realized how pretty she was, and he fell in love with her.

Then she went to the cupboard under the sink.

"Um..." Nick said, not knowing what to do.

She reached for the knob.

Then, a little girl named Sofi burst into the kitchen. "Our tablecloth is on fire! Our tablecloth is on fire!" she shouted. She had been eating dinner and she had knocked over a candle.

Nick grabbed a fire extinguisher and ran out to put out the fire.

Catherine shook her head and opened the cupboard. There was Nick's cat, looking at her sheepishly.

Nick came back in, after extinguishing the blaze, and saw that he had been caught.

"We're going to have to shut down your restaurant," Catherine said. "It's the Law."

* * *

Some time later, Sofi was watching a "Hello Kitty" show on TV about restaurants and she wondered what happened to Nick and her favorite restaurant. So she went there, and saw that Nick was sitting on the curb in front of the entrance, looking morose.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"I'm in love with Catherine," he said, "but she shut down my restaurant."

Just then, the Mayor walked up. "Hello, Nick," he said. "I'm pretty hungry today, what are your specials?"

Nick said, "I'm afraid the restaurant is closed. Catherine shut it down because I have a cat in the kitchen."

The Mayor got red and said, "Catherine works for me! Surely we can make an exception." And he stormed off to the town hall to do some lawmaking.

* * *

The next day, Nick re-opened the restaurant and started serving customers again. The first customer in the door was Sofi, and he made her some spaghetti.

But soon after, Catherine stormed in. "You went over my head," she said. "I'm in trouble with the Mayor now. I'm mad at you."

Nick stammered and said he was sorry.

Sofi whispered to Nick, "You should make her some lunch."

So he said to Catherine, "Wait right there." And he brought her some spaghetti.

Catherine ate the spaghetti. "Wow," she said. "This is the best spaghetti I've ever had."

"Can I tell you something?" Nick said. "When I met you, it was love at first sight."

Catherine said, "Me too."

And they lived happily ever after.

Knock-knock, meat

2008-02-14T16:46:00.001-08:00

Last night we were telling knock-knock jokes - Sofi has a tendency to laugh too soon, but she's starting to get it:
Mama: Knock-knock
Sofi: Who's there?
Mama: Orange
Brett whispers: (Say "Orange who?")
Sofi: Orange who?
Mama: Orange you glad to see me?
Short pause.
Sofi: Can I laugh now?

Later, after she had her dinner of a tablespoon or so of rice, she asked if she could have ice cream.
"You can have ice cream if you have some meat first."
Finally managed to talk her into eating a tiny cube of pork. (It's good pork, too. Tenderloin, cooked to perfection, with a sweet sesame ginger sauce...Cathy made it.) She chewed it methodically, swallowed - and immediately threw up.
Sigh. I'm a bad parent, I guess. What are you supposed to do?
I remember when she used to eat anything! I thought she couldn't possibly be my daughter. Now it seems she's even a more finicky eater than I was. I at least liked meat.

Potty Training

2008-01-30T18:14:00.001-08:00

They told us if we really wanted to potty train we should let her go around the house without her diaper. So we started that yesterday. And...she put a diaper on herself. (They're pull ups.)
Tonight we were playing "chess" and Sofi suddenly said, "I need a diaper!"
So I said, "Why don't you use the potty?"
And she did. So They were right, looks like.

Warms My Heart

2008-01-25T21:22:00.000-08:00

I come out to the living room to see Sofi putting colored squares of paper on the floor in a pattern.
Sofi: Will you play this game with me dada?
Jamie: How do you play?
Sofi: You go like this. (Adds another square.) Your turn.
Jamie: What's this game called?
Sofi: "Road"
My daughter, the game designer.

ESRB uber MPAA

2008-01-07T21:57:00.001-08:00

Sofi doesn't know what G, PG, and R are, but today, when she asked me if she could put a certain "cawwidge" in the Nintendo DS - it was Castlevania: Symphony of SomethingOrOther - I said, "No, you see, it has a 'T' on it, which means it's not for kids. You can play games that have 'E' on them."

Later she came into my office with a handful of cartridges. "These all have E on them."

So, there I am, already shirking my parental responsibility and letting the ESRB decide which games Sofi can play.

You Better Blog About That!

2008-01-03T14:33:00.000-08:00

-sayeth Cathy.

Sofi just watched *Finding Nemo* all the way to the end (though we skipped the bit in the abyss and one in the dirty fishtank - not sure why that latter one bothered her) - she nearly lost interest a couple times but I said, "Don't you want to know if Nemo's dad is going to find him?". When Marlin and Nemo were reunited she hugged me and said, "I love you." Awwwwww. I love that movie. Seriously. Not just in a "It's good for kids" way - it's probably in my top 100 movies of all time. But so's Lilo & Stitch.

So, haven't blogged in ages, might as well catch up:

Sofi's learned to curse, the f-word, Cathy tells me. Probably got it from me. So Cathy told her, "When mommy or daddy say bad words they should get time outs too." Cathy and I have both done a time out at this point.

Showed Sofi how to use mama's cell phone to take photos last night, so now she likes running around the house taking pictures of everything. Cathy'll probably put some up on her blog.

With a little (ok, a lot) of help from me, she made it to the Ember Isle in Phantom Hourglass. It's not a "sword" - I tell her it's a "Go Away Monster Stick". And it isn't Link. I tell her it's Sofi. And she doesn't die. She naps. "Nap-time Sofi," Sofi says, when the Game Over screen comes up. Tore the house up a few days ago looking for Animal Crossing - I figure she's ready - but couldn't find it. It's at the top of our Gamefly queue now.

Other gaming: Bendominos - they're curvy dominoes with pictures instead of numbers - she likes this one. Tier Auf Tier - not so much, she doesn't have the manual dexterity or patience yet. Go Away Monster - she likes this one too. She no longer likes Orchard - she'll ask to play it but get bored before we've even finished setting up.

She always wants to play grown-up games - she likes the components. So we let her play with the Carcassone pieces and the Tigris & Euphrates blocks - we do a version of Cranium where she rolls the die, moves to any spot on the board, and then I take a card and make up a question for her. I hate that game, btw, and yet at the same time wonder why Hasbro hasn't released a competitive, branded product that combines Trivial Pursuit, Play-Doh, and Pictionary.

The other night Cathy said to her, to distract her, "Hey, you want to watch Uncle Danny playing a racing game?" And then it turned out he was playing Crysis. "Sofi can't watch this," I said. "I want to play a racing game," Sofi said, so I quickly made up a game where you roll a die to move along a track. The simplest possible expression of a board game. She loved it, wanted to play it again and again.

She's good on planes, now. "My ears hurt," she says. "Drink some water," I say. "Did that help?" "Yes."

She was scared of New York Grandma's dog, and I was glad, because I don't like dogs and am not looking forward to her begging me to get a dog. But she got used to the dog and ended up liking her. Oh well. I'm getting ready for the "If you want a dog you have to take care of it" conversation, but I had that same conversation about Cathy's cats and ended up being the predominant kitty-litter-changer guy. I took over when she got pregnant and somehow never got relieved of duty...

Birthday

2007-12-07T10:42:00.001-08:00

Sofi's birthday was last month and I never blogged since I figured Cathy had it covered, but one thing:

Dada: How old are you today?

Sofi: Three!

Dada: Very good! You get it. How old will you be tomorrow?

Sofi: Four!

Sofi's Already Starting To Fetishize Money

2007-12-07T10:38:00.000-08:00

Left some money on the desk after paying the housecleaners.

Sofi started playing with it this morning.

Sofi: What does money mean?

Dada: It can be traded for goods and services.

Sofi: Yeah. But what does it mean?

Sofi later gathers up the money and runs out the door.

Sofi: I have a lot of money and I'm going to play now.

Blitzkrieg Bop

2007-12-06T12:53:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Rockband, Sofi's singing Blitzkrieg Bop around the house. This is her interpretation of the lyrics:
"Hey ho, let's go. Shooting in the backpack."
Repeat.

Sims 2 & Potty Training; Hot Chocolate; Coffee;

2007-11-19T10:29:00.001-08:00

We're potty-training Sim Sofi and real Sofi at the same time, and they've made about the same amount of progress - neither of them are potty trained yet, but they're on their way. Sofi digs it: "I want to play Sims 2. I want to finish potty training Sofi." Don't tell her, but while she was napping I had to delete our entire family (where Sofi was a girl) and rebuild it with Sofi as a toddler to make the potty training work.

Skaff turned me on to making hot chocolate from scratch, using Hershey's cocoa - I use the recipe on the side of the box, but mix the vanilla in early (adding the vanilla late seems nuts to me, unless you want that alcohol kick...), a little less sugar, a little more vanilla & salt. Sometimes a hint of cayenne. Sofi & I used to make it together at night, but it seemed like it made her hyper, so we stopped. I'll make it by myself at night now as a comfort food and then have a lot left over the next day - Sofi can have some (she insists on it cold) and I can add it to coffee for a high-quality mocha. So that's where my disposable calories are going lately.

Sofi helps me make coffee in the morning, too - I'll measure the coffee grounds, she'll put it in the filter, put the filter in the basket, and turn on the machine. She gets really upset if I make it without her. Hmm...if only she could measure the water and coffee, she could make the coffee for me before I even get up...

My brother got me a South Park Stickyforms book for Christmas once upon a time - we were going to throw it out but then I figured I'd just remove all the really offensive stickers (Kenny dead, Mr. Hanky, the five-assed monkey) and give it to Sofi. She ignored it up until last night, and then discovered it on her bookshelf - stickers you can pick up and put down over and over? Rock! We'll have to take it away from her before she can read, though...

Energy: 60% (8 hours of sleep, interrupted once at 5 AM by Sofi needing a snack, plus 2 mochas)
Fun: 100%, Social: 100% (playing Sims 2 with Sofi before work)
Hygiene: 25% (haven't showered yet. Hey, something's got to give.)
Hunger: 10% (haven't eaten yet, either)
Bladder: 75%
Environment: 80% (clutter's starting to accumulate in the office, though it's a nice overcast day out so I've got the blinds open wide)
Comfort: 80%

Baby With Hearts

2007-11-18T21:38:00.001-08:00

by Sofia

(Mama & I took dictation.)

Once upon a time, a baby with hearts.
I love you. I play under the blanket.
I can't play under the bed.
A baby with hearts.

I love you best, but I didn't want to
play with you. The words so high.
Okay. But Olivia can't find her best toy.

Nobody.
Nobody.
Nobody.
Today.
When I was a little girl me.

Diaper.

Whistle time. Hi!

The top of the beginning.
I can't. The play dough's so high
as the beginning of the book.
Today.

The flattened dough means
one in everything is so high.
Dough dough.
Double dough.

Pages so hard to best to read.

Underwear of try today.
Toothpaste is dough today.
The words go so wide today.

The penguin said, "Hi."

The End

The Verdict

2007-11-16T10:22:00.000-08:00

She doesn't actually come into our bedroom - she opens the door, sees how dark it is in the rest of the house, and then wails on the threshhold.

Energy 50% anyway, Cathy took care of her this morning and let me go back to sleep...and coffee's kicking in.

Sofi English Dictionary

2007-11-15T21:09:00.001-08:00

Nilla: Vanilla
Bwock: Block
Sindiler: Cylinder

In other news, she was in the bath with her bath letters the other day and said, "I'm going to spell DOG" and did! She got the D & the G upside down, but still. Mama has photographic proof. Of course, mama was the only witness...it could be a hoax.

Energy - 1% (fixing TCRs sucks my will to live)
Bladder - 60%
Environment - 90% (Cathy's been slowly and steadily organizing the house)
Social - 50% (I already miss all the people I saw in San Francisco & Oakland)
Comfort - 80%
Fun - 1% (did I mention the TCRs?)
Hunger - 80%
...what am I missing? Too tired to figure it out.

My Morning In Sims Terms

2007-11-05T11:18:00.000-08:00

Environment: 95% (Just cleaned my office for the first time evar.)
Hygiene: 30% (Skipped my shower this morning - don't tell anyone.)
Energy: 30% (Stayed up late coding with Greg Taylor, our man in Tokyo...and playing Guitar Hero 3...waiting for coffee to kick in...)
Fun: 80% (See aforementioned GH3.)
Bladder: 90% (The coffee is starting to get there.)
Comfort: 80% (Decent chair, flatscreen monitors...)
Hunger: 60% (Haven't eaten yet today, but feeling fine so far...)
Social: 90% (Yay family, yay GH3 co-op, yay Skype.)

Not bad! Always room for improvement, but not bad.

Halloween

2007-11-01T11:22:00.001-07:00

[08:46] brett_douville: This was you and Sofi, right? http://www.gloob.tv/games/2_dad_reenacts_bioshock_girl
[11:16] jdfristrom: Now how'd that get on the internet
[11:16] brett_douville: I figure it was Cathy. Who was probably a slicer.
[11:19] jdfristrom: Sofi had her first halloween candy last night
[11:19] jdfristrom: About 100 calories worth
[11:20] jdfristrom: She threw up on her pillow around 11
[11:20] brett_douville: Oh man
[11:20] jdfristrom: I said, "I hope this doesn't put you off candy." Think my reverse psychology will work, there?
[11:21] brett_douville: LOL
[11:21] brett_douville: Good luck with that

Favorite Color?

2007-10-29T13:35:00.000-07:00

Sofi: Is this your favorite color, dada?
Dada: Which one? The green? Ok.
Mama: If that's not your favorite color, tell her.
Sofi: Is this your favorite color, dada?
Dada: No, my favorite color is black or silver or something.
Sofi: No, your favorite color is green.

Bedroom Door

2007-10-25T16:21:00.001-07:00

Sofi just learned how to open the bedroom door, repeatedly and consistently.

Her bedroom-door-opening kung fu is strong.

So we enter into a new era of parenting. Will she come into mama & dada's room while we're asleep now? I'm guessing not - she usually doesn't even get out of bed when she has a nightmare, she just wails. But we'll see.

Dinner Conversation

2007-10-24T17:21:00.000-07:00

Mama: There's a famous skunk named Pepe Le Peu. Get it? Peeee yuuuu.
Sofi: Two letters.
Mama: That's right! It's two letters. P. U.
Dada: Another word that's two letters is OK.
Sofi: I clicked on it.

Geek Gene

2007-10-14T13:43:00.000-07:00

Sofi: (Looking at clock.) Where's the O come from?
Dada: Um...Zanzibar.
Sofi: (No idea what association led to this.) I want to play Dungeons & Dragons with you.
Dada: Maybe when you're older.
Sofi: I'm two years old.
Dada: Maybe when you're ten years old.
Sofi: Okay.

Product Recalls

2007-10-09T12:30:00.000-07:00

Looking into the possibility of doing some Hasbro games got me thinking about the Easy Bake Oven recall. Cathy still resents her parents for not getting her an Easy Bake Oven as a child, and has repeatedly said, "Sofi's going to have an Easy Bake Oven, damn it!" (Well, not in those words.) Up until the recall, anyway.
So I started browsing various toy recalls online and am just damn thankful that Sofi never seemed to have an oral phase. She hardly ever put things in her mouth. Which is great, because if she did, she might be dead by now. We were very negligent in making sure she stayed away from small objects. (Our big collection of not-for-children-under 3 legos, for example.) Of course, if she did put things in her mouth, we would have been less negligent, but still.
Makes me worry about having a second child. What if the second one isn't so easy? And it just doubles our chances of something going horribly wrong.
Imagine being the inventor of the Hasbro Play Workbench thing, which has killed two with its cute little toy "nails". Ugh.

Cathy Didn't Get It

2007-10-09T12:29:00.001-07:00

That last post, by the way, was about something that Sofi does regularly -
I ask her, "Do you know such-and-such"
and she always says, "Yes"
and then I ask her, "Oh yeah? What is it?"
and then she makes something up.

I've got a new plan - instead of asking "Do you know?" I'm going to ask "Do you want to know?"

Roman Numerals

2007-10-08T18:11:00.000-07:00

The Winnie The Pooh books use roman numerals for chapters.

Sofi: There's two I's!
Dada: That's right. That's roman for two. And look, there's three I's. That's roman for three. Do you know what roman for four is?
Sofi: Yes.
Dada: Oh, you do? What is it?
Sofi: Snuggle.

Lego Vikings

2007-10-05T20:30:00.000-07:00

Lego Vikings
by Sofi

"There's a little guy and he has a stick for poking a hole."
"It's not a boat."
"It has a shield."
"It's not a boat yet."
"It's not a boat yet."
"It's a boat!"
"And they made a little dragon."
"And they're still making it."
"The End."

(That's the story Sofi says when she reads the instructions for building the little Lego Viking set.)

Useful Sims 2 Cheats For Toddlers

2007-10-01T09:26:00.000-07:00

Just came across this - Sofi wanted to move our sim-family into a new house that we couldn't afford.
So: Ctrl-Shift-C opens up the cheat window, and then "Kaching" gets you $1000, "Motherlode" gets you $50000.
There's also the aging problem - although it was cute the first time sim-Sofi grew up and I asked her what she wanted her aspiration to be -
Dada: "Do you want to be...popular...or...rich...or...smart-"
Sofi: "Smart!"
(I told mama later and she wasn't impressed. "She doesn't know what popular or rich means." Still, I was impressed by the snappiness of her decision.)
But we don't want our sim-Sofi grown up, so I haven't been saving the game after we play, to prevent sim-Sofi from aging, but turns out there's a no-aging cheat: "aging off"

Time Telling

2007-10-01T08:16:00.000-07:00

Seemed like a lost cause, even though all we really care about is that she not get up before 7 AM. I'd say to her, "It's not seven yet," and point to her digital clock, but then a seven would show up in the minute place and she'd say, "It's seven!" And I'd say, "It has to be a seven on the left side," but though she can tell her left hand from her right hand I don't think she can generalize.
But this morning, at seven-twenty-something, we heard her shout from her bedroom: "It's seven o'cwock! It's seven o'cwock!"
I suppose we might still get the false positives...

I want the ol back

2007-09-27T21:14:00.001-07:00

Sofi (crying): I want the ol back!
Dada: You want the old back?
Sofi: I made one with my hand. (Holds up 'O' shape.)
Dada: Oh, you want the O back? Where'd you leave it? Does mama know where it is?
Sofi: There's an O! (Points to digital clock: it's now 9:10.)

English - Sofi Dictionary

2007-09-20T22:28:00.000-07:00

Friend -> Sriend
Farm -> Sarm
Funny -> Sunny
Disco Ball -> Dikso Ball
Chocolate Souffle -> Yummy Pessert

The Sims 2

2007-09-20T16:48:00.001-07:00

Sofi's really getting into the Sims 2, it's her favorite thing to do with me now.

We got the idea because we were playing with legos and trying to build our house but we didn't have enough pieces. Then I remembered The Sims. We've made our family, including our cats - Cathy, Nermil & myself are totally recognizable as us - Sofi & Zoe not so much. And then I play, getting direction from her. A couple days ago the social worker came to take sim-Sofi away because she was failing school - and the quit button was disabled - so I ended the process and managed to save her. We started doing her homework then - and then real-life Sofi wanted to do real-life homework. So we gave her a sheet of paper and crayons and she made her Best Art Yet - she's gotten pretty good at filling large areas with color. She can also color inside the lines, when we get crayons at restaurants.

This is pretty awesome: most play I do with Sofi is somewhat mind-numbing for me--stacking blocks, playing very simple games, hide-and-seek, etc--but The Sims is a pretty challenging game, so trying to keep the family going and entertain Sofi with it at the same time is totally engaging.

But one thing we haven't done yet is make our own house - the starting family couldn't quite afford it. We'll have to work our way up to that.

Diaper

2007-09-19T12:56:00.001-07:00

Sofi sometimes insists that I be the one to change her diaper
"Ask mama", I said
"No, you"
"I don't want to"
"You have to"
"You have to" is a new one, today's the first day she said that

It takes a village...?

2007-09-17T13:10:00.001-07:00

I hear it takes a village to raise a child.

Anybody know where we can find a village?

With our parents and friends scattered all over the continental US . . . you might as well tell me it takes a luxury yacht to raise a child.

Grr - any help?

2007-09-06T18:52:00.001-07:00

Not sure how to look this up.

I feel like my tax accountant is overcharging me.

They screwed up, so they've already lost my business. So I can't exactly say something like, "If you want to keep my business, lower your bill."

I'd happily pay them, oh, 2/3 of what they're charging. Which isn't a big delta. It's the principle of the thing.

I never agreed to pay this much for their services...

What happens if I threaten not to pay them at all?

I gather they'd send it to "Collections", whatever that is. And then my credit rating would be impacted.

But how badly? I've owned a home, I've paid all my bills, although sometimes a month or two late, (except for one $20 bill to Blockbuster for a late video...)...would I have trouble getting a home loan because once in my life I stiffed somebody?

S-h-y?

2007-09-05T21:31:00.000-07:00

Sofi always avoided people, who would then say, "Oh, is she shy?" (And we could at that point give a lecture about how we don't like to use the s-h-y word because we're afraid she'll get a complex about it but we never do.)

Today, when running into one of our neighbors at the mall, Sofi cowered behind me and said, "I don't like people! I don't like people!"

That's right, looks like Sofi's inherited our misanthropy. Maybe it's genetic.

(Although, with one of our neighbors who turned out to be a stealth bitch, I have to wonder if maybe Sofi's just a good judge of character.)

It Doesn't Work That Way

2007-08-26T13:58:00.001-07:00

I just showed Cathy & Sofi the Microsoft keynote speech where Bill & I were talking. Sofi said, "Where's mama?" and then, when it was done, she said, "I want to see mama at the dentist!"

I guess the logic is since there's video footage of what happens when I go off and do my thing, there must be video footage of when mama went off to do her thing?

Another Notch Smarter

2007-08-25T23:51:00.000-07:00

We were playing with dice today and she started dictating the rules of the game - I had rolled a two: "You take two dice," she said.
I did, rolled them and got two three's. She then counted "One, two, three, four, five, six" dice out for me. Her first addition!

And she's getting more clever in her machinations to avoid bedtime. (Of course, there's the not eating dinner and then when it's time to go to bed saying she's hungry - but she's been doing that for a while.) Tonight, when I employed my standard trick - "Do you want to turn the light off or do you want dada to do it?" A tough question to answer - for a while she was turning them out herself - probably because she at least felt empowered that way. Later she realized she could say, "I want mama to turn the light off," because then I have to go get mama and that'll give her a few-minute reprieve. But tonight she said, "I want nobody to turn the light off."

I'm Old

2007-08-25T09:16:00.001-07:00

Putting on a suit for Max's wedding I look in the mirror and realize I've turned into an adult somewhere along the way. What was it that give it away? The lost hair?

Jamie: I'm old.

Cathy: Daddy's old.

Sofi: Daddy's new!

Jobs

2007-08-15T13:36:00.001-07:00

Dada: What's dada's job?
Sofi: Work!
Dada: What's mama's job?
Sofi: Scrapbook! (Or, sometimes, "Check e-mail!")
Dada: What's Sofi's job?
Sofi: Paz and airport!

Clearly, "job" means "what you do on a computer."

Swing Vote

2007-08-12T21:44:00.001-07:00

Sofi: I want a new baby.
Dada: You want a new baby?
Sofi: Yes. Let's go get her.

The thing is, we're torn on whether to have another or not, and this'll probably push us over the edge into the "have another" camp.

I did try to talk her out of it, though:
Dada: You know we won't be able to pay as much attention to you if we have another baby?
Sofi: Yes.
Dada: You know a new baby will cry all the time?
Sofi: Yes.

Nightmare

2007-08-12T21:39:00.000-07:00

Sofi: Ahh! Go away, dada! I want mama! (This is fairly typical Jamie-goes-to-Sofi-when-she-cries scenario.)
Dada: What's the matter?
Sofi: (Backing away.) I want the flower!
Dada: You want the flower?
Sofi: I want to eat it.
Dada: You want to eat the flower?
Sofi: Yes.
Dada: What flower?
Sofi: The sundaisy. (This is what she calls daisies.)
Dada: What sundaisy?
Sofi: The *other* sundaisy.
Dada: Where is it?
Sofi: I don't know!

But after that she calmed down and we snuggled.

Catch-Up

2007-08-05T17:23:00.000-07:00

Did I mention that three or four posts ago the number of posts on "Fatherjamie" exceeded the number of posts on "Gamedevleague"? So that's a milestone.

Another milestone - Sofi figured out how the back button on the browser works, just from watching us. She got bored with the web-game she was playing on the fisher-price site and used the back button. I ran out and asked Cathy, "Did you teach her that?" No.

And this is weird - Sofi likes playing Warhammer Quest. Mimetic desire, I expect - she sees daddy playing with the "dada game" and wants to play too. So we just build the dungeon and move guys through it, we don't actually fight anything. I tell her the models' axes are for chopping wood.

She likes playing legos with me, and it practically degenerates into parallel play, I'll get so wrapped up building something myself. Guess I'm missing the point, there.

Jump Out Like Ninjas! Sofi And Games

2007-07-06T11:30:00.000-07:00

Is a new game Sofi and play. We hide in the closet and then "Jump out like injas." Am I teaching her bad things? I'm sure she still has no idea what a "Inja" is.

Another game Sofi likes is concentration - she can't play it with a full deck, but we used QuickCards from www.plaincards.com to make a deck of cards with various shapes on them. That was a fun process of me asking her: "What shape do you want on the next card?" And then either letting her choose an image from Google or drawing it in Gimp.

Tried to see if she could play a "Go Fish" variant with the same deck, and she sort of could, with much hand-holding (and revealed cards), but it seemed like it was stressing her out. She was biting her thumb and looking worried when I'd say to her, "Do you want to ask me if I have any squares?"

Now that she's talking in complete sentences and saying new constructions every day it's hard to tell what concepts well be too advanced for her. Frequently she'll say, "I want to play a new game!" And we'll try to make something up out of components from other games and it will almost always fall flat - she doesn't get the idea of rolling a die and moving that many spaces along a track (although she does love to roll dice just for the sake of rolling dice...hmm...maybe some kind of one-die craps?); she doesn't get the idea of "winning". One succesful game was just to pull Fisher-Price animals out of a bucket and put them in a "zoo."

I didn't realize how brilliant the "Melissa & Doug" wooden jigsaw puzzles really were until we got Sofi some other wooden jigsaw puzzles that were more photorealistic. The Melissa & Doug ones have big tabs and the things in the puzzle are carefully placed to overlap clearly across multiple pieces, so it's more obvious which pieces go together. Sofi can do Melissa & Doug ones but not the less abstract ones we got at the Seattle Zoo.

We ordered "Go Away Monster" and then decided not to play it with her - she doesn't even know what a monster is yet, as far as we know, so why ruin that?

I Really Need To Chew My Food More

2007-06-30T21:43:00.000-07:00

Warning - probably Too Much Information:
Kind of a nightmare, a couple nights ago, some food not going down, but I'm like, "Hey, I can still breathe, so I must not be choking." But it's really bad, and a swig of juice doesn't seem to help. So I sort of give myself the Heimlich and retch into the sink - that brings Cathy running. But there's still some food in there. Then, after another swig of juice, suddenly I can't breathe. Cathy sort of ineffectually tried to give me the Heimlich but I had more luck just sort of punching myself in the diaphraghm - so now I can breathe again, but there's still food in there. And I'm panicking. Hyperventilating. Freaking out. Finally, I throw up everything, and then things are okay.
These episodes have been getting worse and worse as I get older - but no learning is occurring. You'd think I'd slow down and pay attention.

We Have Spelling

2007-06-21T12:31:00.002-07:00

Last night Sofi said, "C. T. A. Is cat!"

Bad Father, Father's Day

2007-06-17T23:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, at the park, Sofi was reluctant to go on the slide by herself, something she used to do happily. ("Bye bye daddy," she'd say, and slide on down.) This time she insisted on going together - so I admit it, I tricked her, and put her on the slide in front of me and let go. She clutched at my leg and screamed, "I'm falling! I'm falling!" So I rescued her and we went down together but it was too late, the damage had been done, trust had been sundered. She cried and I tried to comfort her and she said she wanted mama so I said great, let's go home and see mama. But she wouldn't let me put her in the stroller. "Do you want to walk?" I asked. No. "What do you want?" "Mama." I didn't have my cell on me, so even if I wanted to call Cathy and make her drive out it wasn't an option. I know, this usually works: "I'm going to go home and see mama," I said. "You can come if you want." And I walked out of sight around the corner with the stroller.
She didn't follow; she just stayed in the park and cried.
Great. Now what? If I go back that's just negotiating with terrorists. If I don't go back I'm an ass$#@! I choose to be an ass%$#@ for several excruciating minutes but then she finally comes after me.
"You want to go home to see mama now?"
"Yes."
"You want to go in the stroller?"
"Yes."
Thank God. I start to put her in the stroller and she suddenly changes her mind, arching her back and screaming "No!"
I freak out. "Okay, now I'm angry! You've made me angry! Good job!" I force her down and buckle her up and push her home as fast as I can, with her crying most of the way.
Later, once she calmed down and seemed to love me again, I tried to apologize: "I'm sorry I put you on the slide by yourself." She seemed to get misty eyed and said, "No." I guess she didn't want to be reminded. Maybe when she's older she'll read this blog and forgive me then. (Or maybe she'll take it as symbolic of our entire relationship.)

So, had a great father's day, anyhow! Whether I deserved it or not! Breakfast in bed (poached eggs); fish tacos at Coho's; and Nishino's for dinner, which was a big surprise, since last time Cathy ate there she got sick, so I figured we'd never go back again. Best sushi I've found so far in Seattle, IMO, but I guess you should avoid the bivalves.
Sofi's now old enough to say, "Happy Sather's Day."
And Cathy gave me vouchers redeemable to play boardgames with her. And we're talking geek games like Emperor's Treasure and Battlelore. That's love.

Tag-Team Snuggling

2007-05-30T21:35:00.000-07:00

Since Sofi prefers to sleep on the mattress on the floor of her bedroom, we can both snuggle her at the same time at bedtime, but she usually prefers to send me away. "Go away daddy!" And then she asks for me later when she's done with mama.
Just found out at a party last weekend that we're not the only parents who do this, who get the "Go away daddy" and do the tag-team snuggling thing.

Uh-Oh

2007-05-29T11:36:00.001-07:00

Today Sofi learned to say, "I want to go somewhere new."