Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. This whole real life thing is getting in the way of being a productive dad. I didn't even remotely get the chance to clammor over boxes to get to the books I wanted.
Tonight was an excited little girl getting her pajamas on and hitting the bed with an excited, "Daddy, tell me about the wolf and the piggies..."
Of Three Little Pigs, this father has them squared away, at least the basic version. Maja particularly like when I hit the mattress when the Wolf is knocking on the pig's door.
I tried Jack and the Beanstalk, but Maja (a) didn't see anything wrong with eating the three magic beans and (b) she wanted another David the Gnome story.
For David, I recapped yesterday's story before I started the new one. I was impressed that she remembered David helped a squirrel that had a boo-boo on his leg. I also introduced the fox to the story. I don't believe Maja has ever seen a fox, so the best explanation I could give her was a sneaky dog. I'll find pictures tonight.
The fox visited David with a big problem at the farm. The cows were making pink milk! David jumped on the fox's back and rode off to the farm. Maja told me where to go on the farm, an after a short tour, David ended up in the barn. The cows didn't know what was going, much less that they were making pink milk! So David, hid in the barn until two people walked into the barn and mixed pink paint in the hay! Following Maja's lead, David yelled, "hey you guys that's not nice, " and the mysterious people ran away. The cows were safe, the milk was normal
*Not the best story I could tell. Our youngest had demanded pink milk from the store, and since my wife is a shopping pushover, we have a half gallon in the fridge. After some experiments, it appears that I'm the only person in the house who actually likes pink milk. After telling her that they mix pink paint to make pink milk, she may never try it again, which is okay in my book.*
Monday, January 30, 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
When Silence ISN'T Golden
I've been doing this whole fatherhood thing now for two years, eight months, and nine days, and last night I finally panicked.
I've snatched up kids that have gone under in the tub, grabbed them as they've taken two steps into traffic, and swiped dangerous objects out their hands and mouths. I would call all those times moments of instinct, you just do what needs to be done, everyone is safe, and your heart is racing a bit faster than you like. I would hope that in a moment of true crisis, I could react the same way to ensure the safety of my family. Heck, I've watched my youngest daughter, in her first few weeks of life, breaths away from dying and I didn't panic, I couldn't panic for the sake of my wife.
But last night was full-blown five-alarm panic.
My eldest daughter, Maja, who has been around just as long as I've been a Dad, has slept in our bed since she was a year old. My wife and I were one of those couples that swore up and down that we would never share our bed with a child, but in a moment of exhaustion and desperation, our vows of independence were useless. Truth be told, with the exception of a few bouts of Wrestlemania, the arrangement isn't too bad. The occasional addition of our second child was the straw that broke the camel's back.
We've spent the last few weeks cleaning, repainting, and trying to set up our daughters' room. It hasn't been pleasant all the time, but with the wife coming back from Ikea with new pillows and bedclothes for Maja's bed, we were ready to push her out of our bed and into her own.
Maja is afraid of the dark, and of non-specific "scary monsters," so we kept the closet light on and double checked the spots she thought scary monsters might like to hide. Then, it was six or seven songs, as per our normal nighttime rituals and Maja passed out, and slept straight through the night.
*insert angellic chorus here*
Tonight was night two, and as I sang her song five (Fly Me to the Moon), five little words came out of her mouth that struck terror in my heart.
"Daddy , Tell me a story ..."
Don't get me wrong, I've lived my whole life just to be the story-telling Daddy of Awesome. It may be whole reason God placed me on this Earth. I love stories, storytelling, the theatrics of the whole art. I'll admit to 20+ years of Dungeons & Dragons playing, most of which were behind that flimsy cardboard screen as Dungeon/Game Master. I've had people give serious compliments to my storytelling style, as a gamer and in casual company, and when I meet someone whose vastly superior to me, I try to soak up any piece of wisdom or style I can.
But this is my little girl, asking her Daddy to tell her a bedtime story, like generation after generation had done before.
And I've got nothing...
I partially blame her love of the show Super Why! for my bardic brain fart. Despite covering so many nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and fables, the show butchers them so far, that I can barely remember the actual story. But I completely blame that fact that I thought I had a few more months before she would want this...
Eventually, I stumbled through The Three Little Pigs. Simple, basic, and I throw the fact that the wolf wants to eat the little pigs into the background. Doing in the style of the band Green Jello made her giggle with glee, and want to put the Big Bad Wolf in the corner for being naughty.
She wanted more, so she got a dry version of The Tortoise and the Hare, and when she asked for a third story, I told her it was the last one and what she wanted.
"A gnome story!"
A little background is necessary for this one. My other blog is Gaming With the Gnomies, which to the layman, covers D&D role-playing games, toy soldiers, and specifically a game called Gnome Wars. Oh yes, little inch-high garden gnomes with guns, hunks of cheese, and flamethrowers fighting across the battlefield, all well before Gnomeo and Juliet. I have hundreds of these little guys for games, and Maja has always been allowed to play with the painted ones.
Gnomes have been part of her life since day one, and it's been intentional. It's much easier to get your daughter to play a game of gnomes with dear old Dad, rather than some obscure skirmish during the Crimean War, and if she, her sister Amelia, and any future kids are willing to play with the crazy Old Man while they're teenagers or beyond, it's a coup for weird dads everywhere.
So anyway, gnomes. I told a delightful little story of David the Gnome, who healed a poor squirrel with a big boo-boo on his leg and they became good friends. Within five minutes of finishing the story, I got a final good night kiss and she's been out ever since.
Now that the panic has gone, I vow to never fall short again. Enter Operation: Tell Me Another Story. Tomorrow morning, I'm going through the boxes in the garage to get me back up to speed. Aesop, Mother Goose, Children's Bible Stories, and a little refresher on David the Gnome. David's not just going to be the books and TV series, he's going to be my chronicle story, connecting to all the stories my daughter loves, without butchering the originals. I'll go into more detail about that as it develops.
It could be worse, she's not asking for the keys to the car yet.
I've snatched up kids that have gone under in the tub, grabbed them as they've taken two steps into traffic, and swiped dangerous objects out their hands and mouths. I would call all those times moments of instinct, you just do what needs to be done, everyone is safe, and your heart is racing a bit faster than you like. I would hope that in a moment of true crisis, I could react the same way to ensure the safety of my family. Heck, I've watched my youngest daughter, in her first few weeks of life, breaths away from dying and I didn't panic, I couldn't panic for the sake of my wife.
But last night was full-blown five-alarm panic.
My eldest daughter, Maja, who has been around just as long as I've been a Dad, has slept in our bed since she was a year old. My wife and I were one of those couples that swore up and down that we would never share our bed with a child, but in a moment of exhaustion and desperation, our vows of independence were useless. Truth be told, with the exception of a few bouts of Wrestlemania, the arrangement isn't too bad. The occasional addition of our second child was the straw that broke the camel's back.
We've spent the last few weeks cleaning, repainting, and trying to set up our daughters' room. It hasn't been pleasant all the time, but with the wife coming back from Ikea with new pillows and bedclothes for Maja's bed, we were ready to push her out of our bed and into her own.
Maja is afraid of the dark, and of non-specific "scary monsters," so we kept the closet light on and double checked the spots she thought scary monsters might like to hide. Then, it was six or seven songs, as per our normal nighttime rituals and Maja passed out, and slept straight through the night.
*insert angellic chorus here*
Tonight was night two, and as I sang her song five (Fly Me to the Moon), five little words came out of her mouth that struck terror in my heart.
"Daddy , Tell me a story ..."
Don't get me wrong, I've lived my whole life just to be the story-telling Daddy of Awesome. It may be whole reason God placed me on this Earth. I love stories, storytelling, the theatrics of the whole art. I'll admit to 20+ years of Dungeons & Dragons playing, most of which were behind that flimsy cardboard screen as Dungeon/Game Master. I've had people give serious compliments to my storytelling style, as a gamer and in casual company, and when I meet someone whose vastly superior to me, I try to soak up any piece of wisdom or style I can.
But this is my little girl, asking her Daddy to tell her a bedtime story, like generation after generation had done before.
And I've got nothing...
I partially blame her love of the show Super Why! for my bardic brain fart. Despite covering so many nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and fables, the show butchers them so far, that I can barely remember the actual story. But I completely blame that fact that I thought I had a few more months before she would want this...
Eventually, I stumbled through The Three Little Pigs. Simple, basic, and I throw the fact that the wolf wants to eat the little pigs into the background. Doing in the style of the band Green Jello made her giggle with glee, and want to put the Big Bad Wolf in the corner for being naughty.
She wanted more, so she got a dry version of The Tortoise and the Hare, and when she asked for a third story, I told her it was the last one and what she wanted.
"A gnome story!"
A little background is necessary for this one. My other blog is Gaming With the Gnomies, which to the layman, covers D&D role-playing games, toy soldiers, and specifically a game called Gnome Wars. Oh yes, little inch-high garden gnomes with guns, hunks of cheese, and flamethrowers fighting across the battlefield, all well before Gnomeo and Juliet. I have hundreds of these little guys for games, and Maja has always been allowed to play with the painted ones.
Gnomes have been part of her life since day one, and it's been intentional. It's much easier to get your daughter to play a game of gnomes with dear old Dad, rather than some obscure skirmish during the Crimean War, and if she, her sister Amelia, and any future kids are willing to play with the crazy Old Man while they're teenagers or beyond, it's a coup for weird dads everywhere.
So anyway, gnomes. I told a delightful little story of David the Gnome, who healed a poor squirrel with a big boo-boo on his leg and they became good friends. Within five minutes of finishing the story, I got a final good night kiss and she's been out ever since.
Now that the panic has gone, I vow to never fall short again. Enter Operation: Tell Me Another Story. Tomorrow morning, I'm going through the boxes in the garage to get me back up to speed. Aesop, Mother Goose, Children's Bible Stories, and a little refresher on David the Gnome. David's not just going to be the books and TV series, he's going to be my chronicle story, connecting to all the stories my daughter loves, without butchering the originals. I'll go into more detail about that as it develops.
It could be worse, she's not asking for the keys to the car yet.
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