Collaborative Bedtime Story Prime

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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"

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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?

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.