Children cannot cease but find new ways to embarrass their parents. Alice, our 4-year-old, actually is not that bad but there was certainly, shall we say, a public incident, while on holidays. We were staying in this lovely old country house and we had got this great big inflatable pool out the back. The kids were hopping in and out all day long and we had allowed them to take up the habit of peeing on the grass behind a tree (rather than run across the hard stone floors inside while wet). Alice’s older cousin, who is a boy, stayed for a week and she started copying him, learning that she could pee standing up if she was wearing just her swimsuit.
Anyway, on the last day of the holidays we drove for 6 hours straight back to Paris. The kids were wrecked from being couped up all day in the car so I took Alice and Tristan, our 1 year old, out to the little park beside the apartment block. There was a small playground, too big for Tristan, too small for Alice but they still played there. As Alice was climbing up the ladder to the slide, she froze, clenching her legs together. “Daddy. I need to go to the toilet.” She looked like she was about to pee right there and then. Okay, okay, I thought. I lifted her down and said “we just have to go out of the park and up the lift. You can hold it that long can’t you?” She nodded her head while biting her lip. I picked up Tristan and started strapping him into the buggy when Alice called out “Daddy, I can pee her!”. She was pointing to a small patch of grass, outside the little playground, beside the very public pavement through the park.
“No Alice. We just have to walk over there and go up the lift.” So I went back to strapping Tristan in and then I looked again over at Alice. She had pulled her trousers and panties down to her feet and was about to try peeing standing up. Two mothers, who were sitting on a bench while their own children played, were in fits of laughter. Of course, I couldn’t pass it off with a witty comment because my pidgin French is awful. I had to finish with Tristan and then pull up Alice’s trousers and walk off with my bright red cheeks. Arg.
My four year old daughter, Alice, is going through a “Batgirl” phase. Normally she’s big into her Dora, Princess and more recently Barbies. But she’s always had a thing about cars and trains (her oldest cousin was also big into them) and also dinosaurs, which is just as cool.
The Bat Girl thing, I think comes from her male peers in her school talking about Superman and Batman and also more than occasionally we’d sit and watch cartoons together, such as Avatar: the Last Airbender (Alice thought she was the female waterbender), Ben 10 (Ben is actually Alice’s cousin) and obviously Batman. There was an evening when we were talking about Batman, Robin and Batgirl and I looked up Batgirl on Wikipedia to find her real name. Now we have a little game she plays sometimes where she says “Hi Commissioner Gordon” and I reply with “Hi Barbara Gordon”. (If you didn’t know, the most common incarnation of Batgirl is as Commissioner Gordon’s daughter). We’ve even had to buy her a graphic novel (of the cartoon of course), and I’ve read from it every night for the last few weeks. I’ve got my hands on season 3 of “The Batman” cartoon that features the arrival of Batgirl. She now knows most of the major Batman super-villains. I’ve even done some images for her, ones that she can colour herself (the colour example is actually mine, not hers…).
The thing is, before I had kids, I never really liked Robin, Batgirl or any of the other “sidekick” characters. They always detracted from, what I thought Batman was all about. It’s perhaps unsurprising now that as an parent, I appreciate the kid friendly nature of sidekicks. Alice sees Batman as a family: Batman as father, Catwoman as mother (?), Robin as brother and Batgirl as sister (herself). (I don’t know where Alfred fits into it!)
Some more gems from my three year old daughter:
“You wouldn’t eat me Daddy. My head is too big to fit in your mouth.”
To her Maman:
“You’re my Best Mummy”
(Does she have more than one mummy?)
Alice (our 3-year old daughter) offers us her great wisdom:
Don’t say “Bloody Hell”, say “Oh My God”.
(last time)
Alice (our three year old daughter) has recently developed a love of dinosaurs and this is the result:
(Sorry about the low quality, I snapped this with my mobile phone camera)
Yesterday I had to pick up Alice, my 3 year old daughter, from her after-school instead of my wife. Normally I drop the kids off and my wife does the pick-up, but she’s still out sick today.
I brought Alice’s little umbrella along. It’s a small pink frilly thing with picture’s of Disney’s trademark Cinderella on it and even though it’s not raining, she loves having it on the short walk out of the school. On this evening though, there was a wonderful evening sky. It was dark but clear, that wonderful black-blue smooth gradiant. The stars hadn’t come out yet but there was a small brilliant white crescent moon.
As we walked across the school yard, I pointed the moon out to her and said “you can nearly reach out and grab it”.
“Pick me up daddy, I want to catch the moon with my umbrella!” So I lift her up and she reaches out to this lovely sky with her pink umbrella until she declares that she’s got it. I put her down and she spins around and says “… and I let it go!”.
Then two more shakes of her umbrella and she tells me in the most serious tone, “I’m capturing the stars now!”.
“But Alice, there are no stars in the sky yet.”
“Daddy. I’m just pretending.”
One of the many “joys” of having kids is the family-communal-getting-sick-together weekends.
Kids get sick. It’s part of growing up, builds up their immunity. It is even more common if your kids are in creche or school as they’ll get sick “6 or 7 times in the year” (as our Doctor once told us) as they’ll pick up what ever is going from all their little friends.
What’s worse is, if they get it, you the parent will probably get it too and their siblings will as well. Which is what of course happened to us last weekend. Tristan (our six month old baby) got sick on the Thursday. Friday night and Saturday I was sick. Saturday night Alice (our 3 and bit year old daughter) got sick and on Sunday Sophie (my wife) felt off and today she’s out of work sick. Great weekend!
You’re going to hate me. Sorry.
- Figure out what to get everyone… check!
- Get Alice to write Santa letter… check!
- Buy presents… check!
- Wrap presents… check!
- Put up Christmass lights… check!
- Put up Christmass tree… check!
- Put up Christmass decorations… still to be done but will be done by the end of the week.
So I missed Gaelcon this year. I know it won’t change but it’s the worst weekend to run a convention. There is so much stuff going on for Halloween. In previous years I tried to switch each year between the Horrorfest in the IFC and Gaelcon, but it is very hard to justify spending the entire Halloween weekend away from my family.
It’s surprising how Halloween has changed for me over the years. This year was wonderful. Alice, my three year old daughter, had a whale of a time going from house to house and saying “trick or tricks” (what I don’t get is, she was well able to say “trick or treat” while walking between the houses…) and filling up her bag. And there was such a great atmosphere on the street with neighbours actually talking to each other and interacting with the local kids. A few years ago (okay, many years ago), it was all about horror movies and parties for me. I didn’t catch one horror movie all week!
I can’t wait till next year! 
“Don’t say sugar, Daddy. Say shit.”
