My strange 4-year-old

1. She is slow. I don't mean slow-witted, I mean slooooooowwww. She walks sooooo slooooowwwwly. She seems to be observing everything around her and in absolutely no hurry, ever. I must be the only mother in the world who has to urge her child, "Come on! Hurry up! Walk faster!" My mom calls her "A stop-and-smell-the-roses kind of gal," and that is the perfect decription.

2. Today she said to me (and I am not making this up), "I like waiting." This was while we were standing in an extremely long line at Safeway, such a long and irritating line that I was getting impatient.

3. She also absolutely refused to eat the peanut butter cup I offered her as we were waiting until I had paid for it. I kept trying to explain to her that we were going to be waiting a long time, and I would pay as soon as we go to the front of the line, but she would not eat it-- even though I had already handed it to her. So she sat there, holding this melting peanut butter cup, for TEN MINUTES and did not take a bite until I paid for it. These are clearly her father's genes at work, not mine!

4. Along the same lines, I was reaching for my cell phone today as I was driving home and she said to me from the back seat, "Better not do that. You'll get another ticket."

5. She is so sensitive that her eyes well up with tears whenever we read anything remotely sad, like (in a book we read recently) a mother waving goodbye to her son and saying something like, "I'll see you later." THAT was so sad that she instructed me to "read it in a whisper." That cracks me up-- she often tells me to read sad parts in a quiet voice, as though that will make them less sad.

6. At the same time as she is this sensitive, delicate soul, she loves jumping all over the place, performing and making a spectacle of herself (hmmm, father's genes again?). Yesterday she asked us, "Am I famous?" I tried some equivocating answer about how she is famous to her family and friends, but she immediately followed up with, "Am I very famous?"

Daisy teaches Daddy Bruce Dickinson a preschool song

Sensitivity

Okay... I remember being a very sensitive child, and Mark was, too. But I think (and maybe my memory is just confused) that a lot of it came up later than it's coming up for Daisy. I just can't believe what she seems to be going through right now, at 4.

Yesterday, as I wrote about before, she had a hard time leaving the Dickens Fair and it truly seemed like an existential crisis related to the concept of endings. I think she knew she was tired and it was time to go, but her eyes kept filling with tears and she said, "Mama, every time I say 'it's time to go,' I feel so sad and I want to stay." Knowing that something is over and will never come again in the exact same form seemed extremely painful-- and she was not comforted by the idea that the Dickens Fair is every year and we can always go back. She was sobbing and sobbing. As Mark pointed out, tiredness was part of it-- definitely. But not all of it.

Then, that night, another huge crisis. It started out with her yelling from the bedroom that she doesn't want things to change and become "more different." She has been doing this from time to time lately, so it didn't come as a complete surprise. She was saying, "I don't ever want to move" and "I don't want my bedroom to change." All the assurances in the world that we're not planning to move or change her room don't seem to help. I went to check on her and she was sitting up in bed, trying not to cry. That didn't work out so well, and she ended up crying on and off until 12:30 (!!!!!), when she finally went to sleep. The thoughts and feelings she was expressing seemed beyond where a 4-year-old would be, although what do I know. She repeatedly asked me if things were going to change, and asked me if I had given away her baby toys. (This is kind of funny: when I told her we could save her baby toys and maybe she could give them to her own baby someday, she tearfully explained that she is not going to "get a baby," because "it is hard work and it might hurt me when it came out.")

She kept saying that her mind goes to "sad things" at night, even though she tries not to think about them, and she was weeping and weeping. It reminded me of the way I was around eight-- when I started obsessing about death and realizing that my parents were going to die someday (and so was I). I know Daisy isn't really there yet, but this period definitely seems like the precursor. I guess I do remember starting to get very interested in death around five, although not in the same way it manifested at eight. Maybe it's not so odd for a 4-year-old to be having these thoughts and feelings. I don't know. Something must be changing for her cognitively, and she's getting new and deeper thoughts and feelings that she doesn't quite know how to deal with. One thing is certain: she is a sensitive soul.

Pictures of the Dickens Fair

...the description of the day is the next entry. I am frustrated by the fact that when I try to post captions under photos, they come out all messed up... not in the place I'm intending to put them. That didn't used to happen, so I don't know what's up with Blogger's technology. So all I can do is post pictures without captions. They show: Christmasy Daisy; Daisy on her way to the Cow Palace; the Mother Goose and acrobats show we watched; Daisy going on the Wild Safari ride; people in period costume and some of the exteriors of the shops; a woman pushing an old-fashioned baby carriage, complete with a real baby inside dressed in a frilly bonnet and nightgown; the musical trio we watched and the look of rapt attention on Daisy's face when she listens to music (mixed with some fudge smeared on her face); and Gerald's book store!

Dickens Fair

We took Daisy to the Dickens Fair at the Cow Palace today. Neither Mark nor I had ever been, but this year we wanted to visit our friend Gerald who has a book store there-- he is the dad of Daisy's cute little friend Jeremy from ballet class. Gerald kindly arranged for us to have discounted tickets, which was a good thing 'cause the Dickens Fair ain't cheap. We went, and I have to say it was really fun. I was a little apprehensive going in when I realized (duhhhh) that many people were in period costume and speaking nineteenth-century-ishly to each other (which mostly seemed to consist of greetings like, "Hail fellow well met!" and addressing all females as "dears"). It is not that I had any judgmental thoughts, but I have never participated in anything like Society for Creative Anachronism or anything like that that would have made this experience seem more familiar. I have never even been to a Renaissance Fair. So...yeah. I have to admit that I was hoping to slide under the radar and not get into fake nineteenth-century conversations with the people in costumes. But it was fun! It was like wandering around in a Dickensian London, complete with people with black eyes and coal smeared all over their faces. It wasn't so pretty in Dickens's London, people.

Daisy immediately wanted to eat, so we bought her some spaghetti and meatballs--and I had to rub the tomato sauce off every single meatball. (Aha! That's a flaw of Daisy's; she is a SUPER picky eater). We watched a troupe acting out Mother Goose's nursery rhymes and some acrobats/circus performers. Then Daisy went on an old-fashioned, hand-cranked carousel called the Wild Safari. She rode on a giraffe. Everything looked appropriate to the time period. The best part was that the guy cranking the carousel told a story to the kids during the ride and gave them directions on how to act things out-- for example, at one point he started beating a drum and telling them they were pursued by wild animals and had to flap their arms and fly away. And Daisy was the ONLY CHILD who followed his instructions and acted things out. Hilarious. She is just so into story-telling and acting right now. Her eyes were glued to his face with rapt attention, while I think the other kids were mostly tuning him out and going, "Wheeee!"

After that we bought Daisy fudge at a candy store, which turned out to be the messiest treat ever. She has fudge smeared all over her face in most of my pictures. She loved the music; we watched a trio of performers doing sea shanties and Irish folk songs, and again with the rapt attention from Daisy (music, stories, and performance equal Daisy's three loves right now). We visited Gerald in his book store, which was very, very cool. If I had had money I would definitely have bought a beautiful old print of one of my favorite novels or a book of poetry. Around this time, though, Daisy started this strange new behavior she's been exhibiting lately: getting emotional without much of a cue that I can detect and then being inconsolable. She burst into tears at the idea that we were going to go home soon, and she kept saying that the idea of an ending was just too sad for her. I swear to God that girl is having premature existential crises. It sounds weird, but that is what these crying spells are like. They aren't like tantrums, if you can imagine a kid throwing a fit because he or she is having fun and his parents drag him away from the fun. No. It's more like she's getting tired, and realizes that it's time to go home, but gets overcome by grief and mourning because there will never be another time exactly like this one and it's coming to an end now. Believe me--she manages to convey these things. She is an old soul.

I had my own weird existential moment, too. At the exact moment Daisy started bursting into tears, I saw an old friend of mine-- a friend who dumped me months ago in none too kind a way after many years of friendship, mainly because I was too busy to spend the amount of time with her she wanted (which has a lot to do with me being a mom, of course). So there I was trying to help Daisy in this big crowd of people, and suddenly I see her. She doesn't live around here, but this is exactly the kind of thing she'd be into. It was crazy--I don't think she saw me. She had a big grin on her face like she was having the time of her life and she was alone. She kept walking in my direction, stopping, turning around, heading another way, then coming back, and finally she left. I held my breath the entire time, as the last thing I needed was to get some kind of awful treatment from her right at the moment that Daisy was having a breakdown. It was surreal.

A Few Convos with Daisy Today

1. "Mommy, why do people always tell me I am cute and not that I am good? It is better to be good than cute."

2. "Mama, is it nice to crucify people?" (This was in response to my explanation of "The Ballad of John and Yoko," Daisy's new favorite song... she was asking me a million probing questions and I was trying to explain it.)

3. "Maybe I am proof-wet." (After touching my hair and noticing that her hand didn't get wet.)

4. "Mom! Dad! I want things to stay the same, but they keep getting more different." (This was yelled from bed, while she's trying to get to sleep. She has been yelling things of this nature from the bedroom for a few weeks now. I think when she's trying to sleep, that's when she gets her anxious philosophical thoughts. Reminds me soooooo much of me, but quite a bit younger than when all my existential angst started, which I remember as being around eight.)

Oh dear...

My heart is brimming with love. Is it normal to be this fond of one's own kid? I have almost no complaints about her. The ones I do have are negligible... like, she walks slowly. She dawdles and smells the roses, so if you are in a hurry, she's not the best person to be with. I have a hard time thinking of other complaints, and that wasn't even a real one. She is such a great companion, in a good mood all day long, and it was a long (though fun) day. She is so mature. We picked her up at school, took her out to lunch, took her to the ballet; she was good in the first act, good during intermission, and good during the second act. Oh, and good all the way home. By "good" I mean cheerful, up for anything, chatty, and adaptable. She is so much fun. And she was exactly the same way last year, when she was only three, and we did all the same things. Oh, God. I can't be this lucky. Please please please don't let anything bad happen to her.
PS Pictures of our day are in the next entry

Nutcracker!

We repeated our one-year-old tradition of taking Daisy to the SF Ballet's Nutcracker this year. Here are some pictures-- Daisy wanted to do a lot of the same things, so it's a bit of a blast from the past. The main difference? The fake smile she has learned to put on in the interim between age 3 and age 4. Sigh. As usual, she was attentive and well-behaved at the ballet, whispering relevant questions. Like last year, she hid her head on my shoulder when Fritz breaks the nutcracker because that part upsets her-- but she acknowledged that it wasn't so bad this time. Oh, and she sat in her own seat the entire time! (Last year she sat on my lap.) She seems like such a big, grown-up girl to her adoring mama. PS--Some of the smiles are not at all fake, and I guess it's fair to say that even the big fake-o ones are not ALL fake because she was in such a happy mood... but you can easily tell which is which!

Daisy is quirky

This evening we had a pizza night at Giorgio's. Daisy entertained herself at the table by arranging the salt and pepper shakers, the parmesan cheese shaker and the red pepper flake shaker in various formations as a family and pretending to take pictures of them with her napkin, which she said was a camera. She gave them all identities--Dad, Mom, brother, sister. At one point she removed the parmesan shaker, saying sadly, "Sorry, Dad. You are giving a fake smile. You can't be in the picture."

Children are smarter than I am

1) Daisy walks slooowwwwwwly down the street, and I mean REALLY slowly. My mom calls her a "stop and smell the roses kind of gal." Today she was particularly slow because she was walking in these intricate patterns following the markings of the sidewalk, and I was getting a tad impatient because I was cold and wanted to get where we were going.

Me (to Mark, mumbling under my breath, thinking there was no way she could hear me): Daisy is the slowest thing on the planet.

Daisy (clear and articulate): No, I am not the slowest thing on the planet. A snail is the slowest thing on the planet.

2) I did Park Play today at Daisy's preschool, which involves riding with the kids on the schoolbus to a playground. The kids always beg me to tell a story, and today they wanted "The Billy Goats Gruff." So I told the story, but at the end--to try to make it a little more benign--I did not say the troll was killed. Instead, I said "he fell into the river and floated away."

Maren (cute little girl from Daisy's school): No, a shark ate him. Otherwise he would just float away, end up under some other bridge, and bother more billy goats.

I just thought she was awfully clever to point out the flaw in my superficially cheerful ending. It WAS flawed.