my daughter the crazy person
(or, my poor dog)
All that talk about The Pumpkin being a genius? Well, I guess the “smug-parent-gods” decided to send a little karma or bachi or whatever our way, ‘cause the last few days, our little prodigy’s been a little bit crazy.
Yes, the picture accompanying this post is of my daughter chasing our poor dog through the house, after draping a dishtowel over both his back and her own head.
Uh, yeah. Genius.
It’s not that she doesn’t have friends her own age that she plays with regularly, or that she doesn’t interact with kids at the kiddie gym, or like we don’t play with her. She just thinks that Waldo is a person. Wait, wait, I’m the first to call him a member of the family, albeit a shaggy, dreadlocked, neglected one since the coming of our new boss a year-and-half ago. Just, well...I think he might be getting nostalgic for that pre-toddler-age neglect pretty soon.
“Clap, Waldo! Clap!” Uh, sweetie, those are paws, he doesn’t have hands to clap with. “Dance, Waldo!” Again, uh, sweetie... “Jump, Waldo!” Um, have you seen his legs?
“Bed, blanket, Waldo!” This is her new favorite game of climbing on the futon and covering herself with a sheet. Apparently, she doesn’t understand why Waldo won’t lay his head exactly where she wants him to. “Awake, Waldo!”
“Chair, Waldo!” “Chair” is what she says when she wants you to sit, whether on an actual chair, or floor, or whatever. This caused an upset fit yesterday, leading to a time-out, when she was extremely frustrated (to the point of pushing) that Waldo wouldn’t sit down directly on the dishtowel that she had laid on the floor as his “chair.”
“Drum, Waldo!” “Color, Waldo!” Again, love, the hands thing...
But her absolute favorite is “Peekaboo, Waldo!” This has several variations. One takes advantage of our brand-new French doors which enable her to see Waldo while he’s outside on two sides of the house. Unbeknownst to Waldo, who’s napping in the breezeway, he’s also playing peekaboo with my daughter, who’s taunting him half a house away on the other side of a clear glass door. The other favored variation involves chasing Waldo around the interior wall separating the kitchen and the dining room/hallway/service porch, yelling “Peekaboo Waldo!” as loud as she can and giggling maniacally whenever he comes into view.
I almost forgot, the other day she tried to wipe his back with a used dryer fabric softener sheet. And then, of course, there’s her fascination with towels—draping them on him, making him sit on them, hitting him with them (yeah, that’s a time-out).
My. Poor. Dog.
In basically unrelated craziness news, but having happened just this evening and being too crazy not to share, my daughter is apparently channelling Taylor Hicks channelling whatever blind African American singer he may be possessed by at the given moment. Either that, or the love child of Whitney Houston (pre- or post-crackhead, take your pick) and Taylor Hicks possessed by said blind black guy. The Pumpkin basically gave like a half-hour concert, before, during, and after a speakerphone conversation with her mama’s mama (a.k.a. Nana), in which she sang what sounded like a cross between Buddhist chanting and the ABC song, punctuated by flailing arm movements and strained, constipated squinting. I mean, she was really beltin’ it out. I only wish I had gotten it on video, but by the time I would’ve been able to open a new tape and set up the camera so that she wouldn’t automatically become distracted by it and stop singing so she could look at the baby that lives in the camera who looks suspiciously like her, well, let’s just say we decided to sit back and enjoy the never-ending show.
We’ll get it next time. And trust me, there will be a next time.
“Creativity” and “imagination” are part of genius, right? Yeah, that sounds good....
Wednesday, July 5, 2006