Theology, by Imogen

"God is a miracle! He was there before the whole earth was made. Like, whoa, that's cool." -Imogen

The Tooth Fairy, unmasked

We don't do Santa, because I think it's silly. Why do I want some idiot in a red suit to take credit for gifts that I bought during the shopping season from hell, brought home, wrapped with no help from a Grinchy husband, and put under the tree late at night on Christmas Eve? No thanks.

But when Imogen's teeth started falling out, I figured, there's a fairy tale I can get into. Sure, she's taking credit for giving your kids money, but it's only a couple dollars. It's mysterious as well, all the unanswered questions.

Unfortunately, Imogen doesn't get along well with unanswered questions. So she asked them all. Who was the tooth fairy? What did she look like? How tall was she? How did she get in the room? What did she do with the teeth? Where did she get all the money? What did she do when she had to visit lots of kids in the same night? I finally had to say "How should I know?? I haven't met her!"

Imogen is very literal. To Genevieve, I think, these things didn't matter, because somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew. But to Imogen, the tooth fairy was a real person. She started keeping up a correspondence with her. I was constantly having to scribble replies from the tooth fairy and slip them under her pillow, thanking Imogen for various notes and pictures and drawings.

But she has long been suspicious. Tonight, the truth came out.

"Mommy, I think you're the tooth fairy," she said.
"Oh you do?" I said. My usual strategy is to neither confirm nor deny.
"Yup! Guess how I know," she said.
"How?"
"The hearts," she said, referring to the hearts the tooth fairy drew on notes and envelopes.
I gasped. "The tooth fairy and me make our hearts the same?"
"Nooo... You are the tooth fairy! You and daddy," she said. "Also, your handwriting is the same."
I reflected that maybe I should have made at least the slightest effort to mask my handwriting. I had decided it was unnecessary, given the ages of my children, but I underestimate Imogen's observational skills. I tried for surprise again.
"The tooth fairy writes just like me too!" I said.
"Nope! We figured it out," she said, giving Genevieve some of the credit. "You're the tooth fairy!"

Does this mean I don't have to pay her for her teeth any more?

The average voter...

Actually, she'd probably do better than the average voter.

This is an old picture, obviously. But hey. The dumb smile is just too perfect with the sticker on the forehead.

Genevieve's philosophy of makeup

Less is definitely NOT more. More is the only thing that is more.

Imogen's birthday

Here's a shot of her blowing out the candles. I'm not going to bother with the gift opening. Really, gift opening gifts all look the same anyway, unless one is getting something really unusual. (Happy birthday, here's your very own toilet seat!)

So as far as birthday pictures of children go, you want to see the kid (who changes rapidly) and the cake (which is different each time and NOT made by the kid's mother who has sworn off cake making for all time- for more information, see pictures of Imogen's first birthday.)

Just some random pictures...

The top one is of Imogen's latest tooth loss, a loss from which she has still not recovered. (Physically, I mean. That tooth refuses to grow back.)

Then, Genevieve being pouty. Needs no explanation.

Then, Imogen's new haircut, which is now not as new as it was in these pictures. It's actually quite cute because she's got the natural waves in her hair which make it a flattering look.

Yeah, so I've been busy...

This is a picture of my desk taken on... Friday I think? Ironically, I look around and I've cleaned up my desk and other stuff seems to have taken that stuff's place. Hm...

We have this backwards somehow...

So, Imogen wakes up with a stomach ache this morning. Stomach aches are so vague. There's not a lot you can do for them, their causes are mysterious and they're hard to verify. Is it diarrhea or apendi-whatever? Is it a stomach flu or a cleverly chosen, unprovable, difficult to solve symptom of simply wishing to stay home? A fever, I can handle. The kid is hot, or she is not. Easy. We have the magic number (98.6 or 96.8, I can never remember...) and we have the magic thermometer that tells us (provided it has not again been misplaced). And we have Tylenol to fix it. (I have a hard time inflicting pepto bismol on a person I like. Some cures are worse than the disease.)

So I told Imogen she could stay home from school. I had one final and it wasn't till tonight, so it was no inconvenience to me. However, she came to me 20 minutes later (20 minutes past when she should have been getting dressed according to my oft-ignored morning schedule that only I care about) and announced that her stomach felt much better and she would be going to school. She was in her uniform, and I do use the word "in" loosely in this context. Her shirt untucked and unbuttoned, socks of drastically differing lengths and hair still messy. Still, this was all fixable within the allotted time, though I had to tell Genevieve to get dressed. She seemed to think a day at home was as good a reason as any to spend it nude.

Imogen school called me at around 2:45, not long before I would have left to pick her up anyway. Her stomach hurt, they said, and I needed to come get her. When I arrived they explained that she had seemed kind of down all day long but refused to complain and finally the teacher noticed her clutching her stomach and flinching.

So here I have a child who, instead of pretending to be ill to stay home from school, when sick, will pretend to be well so she can go to school.

That makes me happy.

Sorry for lack of posts...

My semester is winding down and that means everything is due and I'm pretty busy. I'm looking forward to summer.

The girls are partially to blame, by refusing to say or do anything of remarkable cuteness. Children are not so fascinating that I'm willing to type out their breakfast menus or petty spats with each other. They must do their part by being interesting. It's the least they can do for the attention lavished upon them.

Imogen has been going to school quite ordinarily without being either deplorably bad or angelically good. She has nothing more exciting than a spelling bee and History Day coming up. For history day she will dress as a Native American from Montana and recite a paragraph about the state. Montana is a dull state but all the interesting ones were taken. There is a shortage of interesting states and they don't go very far in a class of 14.

Genevieve has also been neither atrocious nor saintly. Perhaps I should be grateful. I'm very suspicious of saintly behavior, viewing it as either a cover up for what is really happening or a short stage to be followed by a disproportionately long period of the aforementioned atrociousness.

Yesterday we went to Incredible Pizza. Think Chuck E Cheese's, but with better games. The girls had a great time, and as they were crawling through those plastic tubes from ball pits to slides, I collapsed on a bench to look around me. I shouted a compliment to the woman sitting next to me regarding the prettiness of the baby on her lap and I could not help but think that this place was everything that is wrong with parenting. It's brightly colored and plastic (in other words, unattractive). It's loud with shouting, music, and a discordant symphony of beeps from the various rides and games. It was so overstimulating that Imogen was wired for the rest of the day and Genevieve came home and fell asleep before dinner.

And they loved every moment of it. Oh well.

Dreams

Imogen asked me several nights ago, "Do grown ups have dreams?" I laughed and said, "Of course." Now, every night, she tells me to have sweet dreams.

One mustn't be inaccurate in our pleasantries.

Chess

Some of my fondest memories of childhood include playing chess with my father. It was time I spent with just him. My mother and I spent time shopping, trading jokes and laughter. My father and I shared books and chess. I haven't played in years and I'm honestly no good at it. But today we bought a chessboard and sat down with the girls to teach them.

Imogen's attention span toward it (and I suspect, her aptitude) was greater than Genevieve's. First we taught the names of the pieces and then we set up the board. While Imogen concentrated on this, Genevieve made the king and queen kiss. The differences between my daughters are very apparent.

We taught them how the pieces moved and set up very simple situations to teach capturing. Imogen was thrilled at such revelations like when a knight is on a white square, all the squares he is covering are black and when a bishop starts on a certain color, he will only ever touch that color square. She was excited by every capture. She traded her queen for a knight and congratulated herself. Jeremy played intentionally badly so she could find ways out of as many checking situations as possible and that is mostly what her game consisted of. No plan was formulated, no attack was mounted. But who cares. She had fun and it was her first game. And she gets to spend time with her daddy, who is much better at chess than me, and will probably play many more games with her than I will.

Not kid pictures

But they are cool pictures.

more black and whites

And another

another

pictures

Imogen's first get-rich-quick scheme

I have a little entrepreneur on my hands. Either that or a scam artist. At any rate, the kid has been losing teeth. And making money at it. After that third tooth came out, well, let's just say that if she were a cartoon character, there would have been a lightbulb over her head and a wicked grin on her face.

She found a little white rock, roughly the same size and shape as a little tooth. You know where this is going. She put it in an envelope and labeled it herself "Imogens fourth tooth" and stuck it under her pillow. Genevieve loved the plan. Honestly, she was salivating for how brilliant she thought it was. Genius, pure genius! No way the tooth fairy would see through this one.

Unfortunately, the tooth fairy did see through it. She left a note for the young businesswoman of the house that she can not be fooled and she only pays for teeth, not rocks.

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. Imogen got a haircut last week (because she started it herself) and I'll be putting a picture of that up soon.

Genevieve's stitches

Looks gruesome, hm?

Today the doctor was taking them out and she asked "Do you want to save them?" I was revolted. "People DO that??" I asked. "Yes, for baby books and stuff. You know, first stitches and all," she said.

And I thought it was a little morbid to take pictures of them. The last thing I need is a bunch of scabby dried up bits of black string to commemorate this event. The very thought makes me twitch.

Will work for ice cream...

The girls were supposed to pick up the living room. We piled everything in a pile in the middle of the floor, mostly laundry and toys, but school papers end up there as well. But that's a boring thing to do with one's weekend, and they found themselves easily distracted. After numerous reminders and warnings, I finally got tired of it. I called them to me in the next room and said "I want that pile cleaned up. Whoever cleans up most will get ice cream." Jaws dropped and they ran out of the room to clean up.

Jeremy looked at me incredulously. "Are you going to watch them?" he asked. "No," I said.

About five minutes later they came rushing back, assuring me that they each picked up the most. I made a production of walking into the living room to somehow determine who had done the most. Imogen started picking up the coloring book mess. "Look!" she said loudly, "I'm picking up things that are NOT in the pile!" Genevieve scrambled to help. After a short deliberation and analysis, I concluded that they both picked up the same amount of stuff and thus would both get ice cream.

Which was the point from the start. But if you promise that they'll both get ice cream when they are finished with the chore, then what's the motivation to do it quickly? And if you put a time limit on that, then they must compete with a clock, which is insubstantial and rather abstract to a child. But seeing your sister pick up with your own eyes, knowing that she might be the one to get the ice cream? That's motivation.

Categories

In movies, a child's drawing offer exciting and plot-relevant insight into the child's point of view. Children draw relatives dying three days before that character dies a gruesome on-screen death. They draw memories of past lives, or ghosts that only they can see.

But in the mundane real world, children's drawings tend to be a little more generic. It's true that each child has their own style. Imogen's people have disturbingly short legs and Genevieve's have no body at all, but their limbs simply grow out of their heads. "Look mommy, I drew you as a mutant!" But mostly they are just drawings.

However, sometimes you get a drawing that does actually offer insight into your child's mind, and while it may not be a supernatural indication that your child is ready for therapy, it can be interesting nonetheless.

See the drawing above. Imogen brought this home from school. This is her family, from right to left, Genevieve, Imogen, myself, and Jeremy. Hair is a defining feature here, classifying each family member into the tiny group in which they belong. We are grouped as a family and then sub grouped into people who are similar.

I've always hated labeling people. In high school you have all these labels. Skater, goth, punk, emo, jock, alpha, etc. People like Imogen invented those labels, I'm convinced of it, out of a need to categorize.