Unmasked

This is me, drawn my my daughter. I think she has a future as a police sketch artist.

I am going back to the Optometrist today to have my eyes re-examined. I am sure that the prescription is wrong. Amazingly, the place that made my glasses will redo the len(e)s at no charge, even though they did nothing wrong. I just walk in with a new prescription, and they do it again. This is weird, but cool.

I can't believe it is raining again. Merde, il pleut!

Another Conversation with my Daughter

Upon noticing a white shirt hanging in the closet, my daughter (age 6) said:

Daughter: You have a white shirt?

Me: Yeah.

Daughter: But you never ever wear white!

Me: Well, sometimes, one needs a white shirt. But you are right, I usually avoid white.

Daughter: Only dads that are 30 wear white. Really young dads.

Another Conversation with my Daughter

In the bath, she told me how a boy who used to sit behind her kept pulling her hair. They are both 6 years old.

Daughter: Does anyone pull your hair in class?
Me: I am at work all day, and I only have one class - my French class - on Thursdays.
Daughter: But, does anyone pull your hair in French class?
Me: No ... well, not so far.
Daughter: Are there any pretty girls in your class?
Me: Yes, I think so.
Daughter: What are their names?
Me: I am not sure I can remember all of their names.

I told her (en français) that my French prof is from France.

Daughter: He's from France! Wow, that must be so cool. He must be really good at making pasta.
Me: Pasta is an Italian dish.
Daughter: It is?
Me: Yes, but my French prof can speak Italian and Spanish too.
Daughter: Well, maybe you can go to Paris and have pizza.

Ringo has a Really Big Nose

My daughter, almost 7 years old, has a growing fondness for the Beatles, largely because she recently watched Help! She loved the madcap adventures of the four motley gentlemen from Liverpool very much. But, I now have a suspicion that she thinks Ringo is called Ringo because he was in possession of the sacrificial ring in that film.

We sat down and had a look at some Beatles clips on Youtube and had a wide ranging discussion of all things Beatles. Mostly, she wanted to know who sang what and why didn't Ringo sing more songs. That is not a complex question, but diplomacy won out in the end. I didn't want to slight Ringo in any way. But, then she said that Ringo is a really good drummer, perhaps the best she's ever heard, aside from the drummer in the Doodlebops, perhaps.

I resisted the urge to pass on my favourite John Lennon quote, which was his reply to an interviewer's question as to whether Ringo is the best drummer in the world.

John said: "He's not even the best drummer in the Beatles." Oh, so cutting and so true.

My daughter went on to ask:

"Why does George look depressed?" Hmmm, does he? I thought she would have said something about his ears.

"Why was John shot?" Now that is a tough question, and I really didn't answer it very well. I hardly knew what to say. I remember that day as clearly as it was yesterday, but I am not sure anyone could really answer that question, especially when the person asking is so young and innocent.

I wondered if she was so fond of Ringo because she knows that John and George are dead. Perhaps she is subconsciously aware of the McCartney-Mills fiasco, and so Ringo appears to be the least damaged, but then we did a quick Google image search and she read a caption beneath a photo of Ringo and said "Ringo had a second wife?" Maybe the infatuation died there, because she followed that with "Ringo has a really big nose!"

The Man in Black (and red)

I asked for and I received another picture of me, drawn by my daughter. Again, we have asymmetrical feet and even legs this time. I now have two-fingered claws on each hand with arms as disproportionately short as a Tyrannosaurus Rex :-) I like my rosy cheeks and my rose coloured glasses.

She has developed a new style of mouth, one that is off to the side and rendered in a cartoonish style. I really like that. The oddest thing is that she gave me a red belt. She said that she knows I wear a black belt (in truth, I don't generally wear belts), but she gave me a red one so it wouldn't look like I was wearing a suit.

Tyrannosaurus Rex


A recent picture from my daughter. Why is it that her drawings of dinosaurs are more accurate than her drawings of me?

A (brief) conversation with my Six-year-old Daughter

Daughter: Most grandmas tend to be Portuguese.

Me: Is your grandma Portuguese?

Daughter: No...well, if I had another grandma, maybe she would be Portuguese.

Chalked Up

Here's an action shot of my daughter drawing another painfully accurate picture of me, this time in chalk. The only problem is that she made my left foot preposterously large, rather than the right as in the previous effort. Notice, however, that I am still afflicted with three-fingered hands. I do like the sun and birds. Please note that I have no shirt or pants even approximating the colours suggested in this piece of sidewalk art.

Technorati Tags: me, daughter

Me


My daughter drew this remarkably accurate picture of me. It's uncanny, right down to the huge right foot and three-fingered hands.

Technorati Tags: me

Another Question

A recent post by Meliors prompted me to ask this:

1) Do your parents (brothers, sisters, grand parents, aunts, uncles, etc.) read your blog? For the parents out there, do you read your children's blog?
2) If so, are you reading it secretly?

P.S. Happy birthday to my daughter (she's too young to read this).

Technorati Tags: blogging

Happy Birthday to You

My daughter turns three years old today. She is very cute and very sweet.

Tags: family

Love You Forever makes me puke.

My dislike of Robert Munch's children's book "Love you forever" is total. I wondered if it was intended to be some kind of dark comedy. In some ways, it is very funny, and I laughed the first time I read this story about the most dysfunctional mother-son relationship ever portrayed in children's literature. The last segment where the grown man sneaks into his mother's house to cradle his elderly mother in his arms is perverse and freaky. If one reads this book seriously, it is downright creepy. Has the author never heard of privacy? Perhaps there is something else going on. A few pages earlier, it is the psycho/stalker/mentally unstable mother who drives across town with a ladder strapped to the roof of her car. She climbs the ladder to sneak into her son's bedroom, crawls across the bedroom floor, and rocks him in her arms. I wonder what the man's wife had to say about that. Creepy is too kind a description of this bizarre book.

The scariest thing about the book is that it has sold 15,000,000 copies! What's wrong with you people?

If you don't believe me, believe my daughter. She will bring the book over and ask me to read it to her (I guess she is an eternally optimistic two-year-old). Part way through, she will beg me to stop. "I don't like that one," she says. In ten or fifteen tries, we rarely get past the first three or four pages, and I am relieved when she says she doesn't like it.

Oh, and the art sucks too.

Tags: Robert Munch, Children's Literature

"Hey Homo"

Is Sesame Street putting hidden messages in its CDs? Listen to Elmo and the Orchestra, and find out for yourself. Since my daughter adores this CD (which received the 2001 Grammy award for Musical Album for Children) I have heard it countless (and I mean countless) times. I am tired of it.

But, there is no longer any question in my mind that Big Bird says "Hey homo" when Elmo comes to visit. Just what is Sesame Street trying to do? Perhaps this is a response to all of those people who have long believed that this little red friend is a little gay friend.

Tags: Sesame Street, Elmo, Big Bird