Playa, playa!

Marcel gets what she wants.

Of course, a lot of this happens because people line up to give her things. Seriously. There’s competition to spoil her.

A lot of this happens because everyone wants to be on her good side. As my mother explained when she directed my dad to buckle a defiant Marcel into her car seat, “I’m not gonna be the bad guy.”

But Marcel isn’t a passive player in this game. She’s an active player, too. She will even manipulate you. This past week, when she wanted some crackers, is a prime example.

Apparently, my wife has been cracking down on Marcel’s cracker intake. So, of course, Marcel came to me to get her cracker fix. I was feeling lazy–too lazy even to spoil–so I suggested she ask her mother.

Her eyes immediately grew big, she waved her arms wildly and screamed,

“Nooooooooo Mommy!”

Once she was sure that I wasn’t going to move, her head went on a swivel to make sure my wife hadn’t come into the room or was even in earshot. Satisfied that the coast was clear, she leaned in, looked me dead in the eyes, then whispered menacingly.

“You do it.”

She’s too cute to hate the player, though. I can only hate the game.

 

Cats in the Cradle

Marcel likes to get involved.

If she sees me at the computer, she climbs into my lap so that she can look at the screen and grab the mouse. If I go outside, Marcel starts looking for her coat so that she can tag along. If I start to cook a meal, Marcel pulls a chair up to the counter so she can participate.

Tonight, she pulled that chair up a little early. I wasn’t processing ingredients, yet. I was just washing the necessary pots and pans. That was fine with Marcel, though. She wanted to help washing pots and pans, too!

I told you. She likes to get involved.

After quite a bit of pestering–my wife and I were hungry and wanted to move quickly–I relented and let Marcel help scrub a pan. Shockingly, the not-yet-3 y.o. was pretty good at it.

She wasn’t just trying to splash water or blow bubbles. Marcel was scrubbing! So much so that I asked her if she’d be just as interested when she was 13 y.o.

At first, she ignored me. So I repeated myself. My wife wanted to make sure she had accurately heard what I said, so I repeated myself again. My wife, very interested in the answer for obvious reasons, even waddled her pregnant self over to the counter to hear Marcel’s response. Still, Marcel ignored us. So we waited longer.

Eventually, Marcel relented and looked up at us. “Will you promise to do this when you’re 13,” I queried, yet again. Marcel blinked a non answer and went back to her scrubbing.

And we went back to worrying about the teen years.

 

Big Dreams

Whenever I embark on an endeavor important to me, I fantasize that I will play it out in glorious fashion.

We will not only win the Little League championship, I would dream, but I will hit a home run in the effort. I will not only write a screenplay, I’d think, but it will sell $400 million worth of movie tickets worldwide and launch my fabulous Hollywood career. I can’t help it. I even start spending my lottery winnings whenever the Powerball jackpot goes over $100 million. In my head, of course.

Becoming a parent was no different. In Marcel’s case, my dream was that her first words would be “Yes”.

What I didn’t want were her first words to be “No.” I felt that if her first words were “No” then that would mean that I had only ever told her “No.” Instead, I wanted to be the kind of parent that told his child “Yes.”

I wanted to be the kind of parent who not only said, “Yes, you can have that cookie,” but also the kind of parent that said, “Yes, you can read that book; Yes, you can explore that garden; Yes, you can climb that mountain,” and in so doing, teach her that the world really is her oyster and that everything in it is her pearl and, in her possession, that pearl will gleam like it had never gleamed before.

Of course, it took her awhile to get around to saying “Yes.”

But last night, we sat down to watch recording artist Will.i.am’s video mash-up of Barack Obama’s speech after the 2008 New Hampshire primary election for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States.

Jesse Dylan’s video features music written by Will.i.am set to the words of that speech. The music is performed by other recording artist who are white and black and old and young. The words are sung or spoken by Will.i.am and a variety of other black, white, Latino and Asian celebrities of the music, television and fashion worlds. They’re performances are intercut with video of Obama speaking on that January day in New England. Together, the effort is nothing short of moving. The video concludes, with it’s chorus, in soaring fashion. “Yes. We. Can.”

Since she is just short of three years old, it never occurred to me in the week since the video’s release to screen it for Marcel. But as I sat to watch it at my home computer for the upteenth time, Marcel joined me. Maybe she wasn’t drawn by the music. Perhaps, she just wanted to sit in Daddy’s lap for a spell. Maybe she really wanted to videocam with my parents. However, the video quickly captured her attention. She insisted that we watch it three times. Then we went downstairs and told Mommy what we learned.

“Yes, we can.”

And, thus, a daddy’s dream came true.

 

Tough Kid

Last Sunday morning, Marcel climbed up the stairs to visit me in the home office with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Apparently, she couldn’t find her pacifier.

At 2.75 years old, I have finally reached the point that my wife had reached some time ago; It’s time to ditch the pasie. Initially, I tried some old-time, schoolyard shame and ridicule to break the habit. Usually, that went something like, “You don’t need no pasie”, “You’re too big to want a pasie”, or “Give me that pasie!”

Marcel, however, completely ignored all of it. Exasperated , I switched to a new tactic on Sunday morning. I tried pity.

I figured that if Marcel thinks it’ll work on me, then maybe that’s because she’s particularly sensitive to pity. “I don’t like to see someone hurting,” I imagined her thinking, “so maybe they won’t want to see me hurting, either, and if I act like it hurts me not to have my pasie, then maybe they’ll find one for me, and do so quickly.”

Thus inspired, I wailed, gnashed my teeth and even blubbered, “I can’t take you wanting the pasie, anymore! You don’t need that pasie! Stop asking me for the pasie. I can’t take it!”

Marcel blinked at my display. Then she looked me dead in the eye and, with nary a stutter, weep or gnashed tooth, she coldly responded to my pitiful self.

“Take it.“

We got up to find her pasie.

 

It’s a Girl!

We had our third sonogram on Tuesday and Baby #2 is going to be a girl!

I’m sure there’s more reasons for the 20 week sonogram than just to determine gender, but gender was all that my wife and I wanted to know. Given our level of interest, you’d think this sonogram was going to tell us everything about our child. However, aside from determining a few other physical features–Baby #2 has the same head-shape and feet as Marcel–there’s not much more information, besides gender, that we wanted.

Though this sonogram doesn’t answer a lot of questions beyond gender, the answer that it does give raises a lot more questions. For instance…

• Will being a girl make her a competitor of Marcel’s or a conspirator of Marcel’s?

•  Will we be better and faster at doing her hair because of our earlier practice with Marcel, or will we just be twice as slow and half as effective?

• Does Daddy get two daddy’s girls or will he have to share with Mommy?

• Does somebody have to be a tomboy to balance things out, now, or do I have to become girly in order to fit in?

Thus, for all the clarity that the answer to the gender question brings, it also brings about some murkiness. What is clear is that the adventure is getting more and more adventuresome by the day.

I can’t wait to meet you in person, Baby #2.

 

Happy Cakes

The only thing that my mother wanted for her birthday, last week, was to hear from her youngest grandchild. Because my wife and I had to attend a small fundraiser for a friend’s non-profit dance company and dance school that evening, Marcel and I called my mom first thing in the morning in order to provide the desired gift.

While that timing protected my mother from the torture of waiting, it didn’t allow me the opportunity to fully prep Marcel for her role.

Fortunately, though, Marcel has been around the birthday block a couple of times, now. She has been to birthday parties, handed over birthday presents, played birthday games and eaten birthday pizzas, sodas and cake. Thus, I felt she was capable of pulling a little something together. With that in mind, we gave mom a call at about 8:30 am.

“Hello,” my mother answered the phone cheerily.

“Happy Birthday, Mom!,” I responded. Then, I prodded Marcel.

Eagerly and excitedly, Marcel did the best she could.

“Happy Cakes!“

 

The Magical “I Can’t”

As is the prerogative of the toddler, Marcel is learning to express contrarian opinions. She does it in interesting ways.

Lately, she’s been saying “I can’t”. Of course, this raises all kinds of concerns for a parent. Is she defeatist? Have I failed to effectively teach her the benefits of hard work and effort? Did she learn those dreaded words from me and my defeatist attitude? Fortunately, in our case, those questions are quickly dispelled.

Marcel doesn’t always use words to convey their definition. Sometimes, Marcel uses words like they are talismans. She uses them like one would use “abracadabra”, like magic words that mean nothing in and of themselves but are capable of mysteriously bringing about a desired result.

For instance, Marcel realized that the words “too small” would magically get her out of undesirable clothes. Clearly, she learned this because my wife or I would take clothes off of her after saying the magic words, “Oh, that’s too small.” Neither of us ever stopped to explain the concept of size to her. In fact, when we commented on the undesirable size of the clothes, we probably we’re talking to ourselves and ignoring Marcel, and what her view on the clothes might be, altogether.

But she wasn’t ignoring us. She was watching and learning and figuring out that the words “too small” would get you undressed. And thus, to this day, Marcel invokes the magic words “too small” any time that she doesn’t want to stop what she’s doing–watching TV, perhaps–to get dressed.

The first time Marcel used magic words was to get out of diaper changing.

Marcel can sit in a dirty diaper all day. That, and her penchant for liking to push our buttons, can make the process of changing Marcel’s diaper an adventure. One of the things she likes to do is jump when you’re changing her diaper, no matter how much poop.

The first time–well, the first few weeks–I didn’t realize that she was playing. I feared that, in my unfamiliarity with cleaning a girl’s bottom, that I might have been making mistakes. I feared that I might have been causing my little girl pain. So I often asked, “Did I hurt you?”

Marcel picked up on my hesitancy right away. Before long, whenever I tried to change her, she’d exclaim, “I hurt!“, giggling the whole while. Unfortunately for me, it took me awhile–and some pestering my wife with questions and even a trip to the pediatrician–before I caught on.

But caught on I did, just in time for the “I can’t”s. By the time of the “I can’t”s, I had realized that this wasn’t evidence of Marcel defeatist attitude, but of her triumphant spirit. In Marcel’s lingo, “I can’t” isn’t a surrender, but a successful strategy. For Marcel, it’s magic.

 

Not Yet!

On Thursday, Marcel wanted to take a new book to school. Unfortunately, it was too big to fit in her pocket.

My wife offered to put the book in her pocket and successfully did so. Marcel marveled at that.

“You put it in your pocket?”

“Yes,” my wife explained, “I’m a big girl.”

That wasn’t adequate explanation for Marcel, though.

[But] “I’m a big girl.”

Admitting the truth of Marcel’s statement, my wife clarified that she was a bigger girl. That she was, in fact, a woman.

Marcel must’ve liked the sound of that, so she exclaimed…

“I’m a woman!”

 

Merry Christmas

Marcel still isn’t old enough to anticipate Christmas.  My wife and I had to anticipate it for her.  We very much anticipated this Christmas because we were very hopeful that this Christmas would begin Marcel’s Christmas memories. 

Thus, we decided to spend Christmas morning in Marcel’s home, rather than with my parents.  And we were up ’til 3 am on Christmas eve wrapping Marcel’s presents just so.  All of that was the culmination of weeks of prepping Marcel for the big day, including taking her to buy the Christmas tree, singing carols and otherwise extoling the virtues of Christmas morning.  Still, it wasn’t enough. 

On Christmas morning, we, not Marcel, were the first to wake and beat Marcel downstairs to the living room where we set up the gift-laden tree.  Then we had to coax Marcel downstairs. 

“Come on, Marcel, and see what Santa brought you!” 

Still, she resisted.

“I can’t”, she invoked her current terrible two version of refusal.

“Hurry up and see what Santa brought you, Marcel!”

“I can’t,” she determinedly continued.

“Don’t you want to see all of the gifts?”

“I can’t,” she continued all the way down the stairs.

Then she turned toward the living room and saw the gift-laden tree.  And she gasped. She put down her passies and her sippy cup and stumbled toward the tree.  And she gasped, again. Then she said, “Oh my god!” under her breath before she tore into the wrapped boxes.

And, thus, Marcel expressed her first wonder at the joy of Christmas.

 

Tough Week

I spent Tuesday night in the hospital after a losing bout with stomach flu. Because I was unable to keep anything down, there was a real threat of dehydration. It seems like I was constantly on an IV during this stay.

That was better than last year. Last year, I was in the hospital for the same symptoms. The only difference was in the cause–a bad reaction to an anti-biotic that I was taking for a misdiagnosed sinus problem–and the extreme.

Last year, I tried to hydrate myself. I ended up so dehydrated that, as the E.R. doctor said, my heart was pumping air. Apparently, all my fluids had rushed to my gut to help fight the infection. I was so dried out, except for in my bloated gut, that they couldn’t even find a vein in my arm. They had to stick the IV straight into a vein in my neck. I was in the hospital for four days. That first day in the hospital was on Christmas Eve and was spent in the ICU.

I probably should’ve kept that in mind when I was playing with Marcel. For the day or so before I got sick, we had been constantly changing messy diapers because of her own stomach flu . I wasn’t completely oblivious to the danger. For instance, we were even more conscientious about the hand washing after potty and diaper changing than usual. Apparently, we needed to be even more conscientious.

But maybe it was the kissing.

You know, she’s really adorable. And she’s even more adorable when her spirits are up and her smiles and laughter easy. When we get to playing it’s very easy to fall into a puddle of hugs, tickles and kisses. And it’s special every time. Very special.

That’s worth a night in the hospital.