The next logical step in the march of reason is its application in a planned manner to further one’s goals.   The skill of debate! the power of persuasion! the art of the deal! The heartstrings of empathy! The cruelty of extortion.   G has gladly embraced her new abilities.

She is always, always, ALWAYS, asking about the next step.   It usually involves cupcakes.

G: I fell. I hurt my knee
Me: let me kiss it and make you feel better.
G: thanks daddy.   maybe I can get a popsicle to make me feel better?

I took her for a haircut the other day, and forewent the dazzle of Kiddie Cuts and $30 for the efficiency of Great Clips.   $12, 20 minutes, and some suicide-hotline-counseling later, G had a fistful of loliypops.   I can afford a lot of lollipops for $18.   Giving your kids has diabetes has never been cheaper! Well done, Dad!

She knows about monthly birthdays, and every day is asking when its her birthday, and if she can have cake?   When that fails, she asks if we can have balloons.   I got suckered into a special trip to Walgreens to buy balloons, and now there are about 20 balloons stuffed in G’s laundry hamper.

She knows about Halloween, and almost every day asks when its Halloween, and when she can get a new costume and candy?

You have to admire this ruthlessly efficient Machiavellian strategy; smart little girl.   But sometimes it goes too far.   The haircut went down famously, she was almost happy through most of it, and even though she got an immediate reward, I wanted to convey to her the importance of her being reasonable to the tune of 66% savings, and I promised her a reward, so bought a package of $.87 ready-to-expire cupcakes from Fresh & Easy.   When I gave her one, we whispered secrets to each other about how special her behavior had been.   Then she whispered more, her face and neck covered in green icing, about how she was pretty sure there were more cupcakes.

G has finally mastered braking with her pedals.   It was awesome, for about 30 seconds, then it became awful as she would pedal 2 strokes, insist we all stop, pedal 2 strokes, insist we all stop, and then finally toppled over at .2 mph.     Then she hated using the brakes all over again.   I briefly grappled with explaining to her in simple terms she could understand that riding is all about flow, and flow is dynamic and must be felt not defined, so she must stop doing whatever does not need doing when she is doing it.   I quickly gave up and just told her to flow, you don’t get it now but if we keep doing this you will.

She knows how to climb, descend, steer, brake, and be terrified of cars. And after a recent ride, she has learned how to suffer. We had a busy day of pool sessions and trips to the store where I bought her a bag of balloons and we spent the afternoon pumping them up. Literally, pumping them up – G brought in one of the pumps from the garage and waited impatiently as we put each balloon on the nozzle for her to pump. By 8pm and a mile of riding to the park and playing park games, she had the worst bonk in history. She walked up the street while I towed her bike and she wailed Moooooooooommmmmmmmmyyyyyyyyyyy!     The Tour De France has been lost with more dignity.

She is ready to get rid of the training wheels.   From behind she looks like a pretzel humping the Leaning Tower of Pisa.   Her balance is perfect, but skewed fundamentally due to the training wheels.   There will be a brief stretch of ugliness.   But it will be really ugly.   661 does not make armor so small.   I think I will wait til it is cool enough to put her in long sleeves and long pants, and get her when she is wide awake and happy to rebound, and then chase her around a smooth basketball court at one of the parks instead of the street, maybe one of those soccer fields groomed so low and hard and awful for Ultimate will finally give back and be a good learning surface for G.  

The plan til Fall is to get her strong, confident, and willing to bounce back. I wonder if its me or G pushing for this, but when its time to step up anything less settles into a ceiling. We both know it. A cache of confidence will be good for her.

The zoo has become my and G’s little summer hobby, almost as much fun as painting molding and doors. She loves the playgrounds and exhibits-nee-playgrounds, the water parks cool her off when the heat rises, we spend awesome time alone, and Beckie spends awesome time alone. I come home utterly blown from ~3 hrs of chasing, lifting, pushing, entertaining, obeying and coddling G.

She knows most of the displays, and outlines our itinerary by name.   Her names, at least, though she is very insistent to all who will listen that they are wallabies and not kangaroo.   Today she wanted to go to the bug park.

ME: The bug park?
G: the bug park.
ME: Is that the Farm Park? the Wallaby Park?

I asked for directions, she did not know. Half an hour later at the petting zoo she spotted lady bug and and earth worm statues

G: “see daddy! the bug park!”

Water shoes, sandy paths and running do not always mix. She has slid out 4 times in our last 2 trips. Brief periods of sulking are followed by more rambunction, triage in the water parks, and strange looks from parents thinking I beat my kid on the legs.

a pensive visit to the flamingos right after face-planting

rejuvenation

remarkable resemblance

every visit must end with the Merry-Go-Round

different toys are brought each week

friends visited each week

Never to ride the same animal twice, though they are all named Kiesha

I’ve been trying to find ways to let G play with other children more. In school she is a little social butterfly, but the dynamic in school with roles and rules is different than with friends.   And its a step in her social development I think is lacking.     She is very focused on herself, or on the other kids as actors in her little plays.   This is probably every kid her age.   But it seems different when its her 1-on-1 with another person she knows well, at least it is in how she interacts with me and Beckie and Kila and Alana where its all more give-and-take.

I was initially soured on the whole experience of friends cause of our new neighbors.   Their kid is kinda bratty,their dad is kinda chatty, their mom wants us to be bff.   They kinda sensed my feelings despite my trying to be nice, and suddenly their daughter is not available.   Probably for the best, when that’s how they roll; i hate fake friends.   But I feel responsible that G’s lost a (sometimes)(slightly mean)(high maintenance)(play) mate.

At the park or the zoo now,   I encourage her to play, and I shmooze with the other kids and parents if it helps.   Single serving play-niceings are much easier for me than repeated play-niceings, and are certainly no more effort than riding the rodeo bull that is Genevieve for an hour.     But I’ve also started looking for kids that would make good friends. I reached out to the mom of a friend she has at school that is a very sweet little girl — no playdates yet but maybe it will work out. Invites to Rocky Point go first to people with kids G would like.

When my friend Noel invited us all to be their guests in Flag during the Crazy 88, I was thrilled. Noel is super guy who I’ve enjoyed riding with about 10 times, and his blog and pics are so similar to my own I knew it would be a good fit all around:   kids and kids, parents and parents, lifestyle, anal-retentiveness, waking up pre-dawn to ride…     I doubted myself more than Beckie or Amy or Noel, or G.   but, G is the rodeo bull that is Genevieve…so we made a point to arrive at a sensible hour to let the kids bond and the parents unwind.

G had seen pics of Noel’s girl Gianna, and I tried to psych her up for the trip, to try to build a notion of a relationship with Noel’s kids so she would treat them more like friends instead of props.   She was inconsolable when she left her backpack at school, wailing about how it would affect the impression she would make.   The last half hour of the ride she   couldn’t wait to meet her new friends, and repeated their names over and over: Gianna and Aran.   G is a rodeo bull, but she is a smart, sweet little girl…I knew right here that short of another thunderstorm it would be a great weekend.

The details are superfluous, but the self-doubt I had after the butthurt-neighbors-experiment vanished completely.   It seemed so normal and so natural to treat all the kids like one bunch, and Noel and Amy so easy to make it all go.   When the kids were connecting, it was really great to watch.   Aran challenged G, G challenged Gianna, and they fed each other’s pretending.   Stumbling punchdrunk around the truck after the race, I couldn’t help smiling at how they wanted me to put them in the bed so they could pretend to be dragons playing in their spaceship.     Good friends, good children, good times.     There, I said it!   I genuinely enjoyed hanging out with the kids.   Even the ones who were not mine.   Even when I had to negotiate a truce to a soccer\hide&seek battle-of-wills.   Even when I had to negotiate a truce to stoked-boy-crashing-the-goal\little-tomboy-wants-to-learn-rules.   Even when the other G peed herself and I had to wipe a tinyButt that was not of my line.   It was weird, I knew what to do, it was just like G, but a different tinyButt.   I promised Noel when he left that the kids would all be alive and reasonably unfilthy when he returned.   Yeah me!

Hopefully their family will let us return the favor and come be our guests in Rocky Point soon.

One of the things they teach you in lifeguard school is the last thing you do is go in the water after a victim — strive to preserve your safety first.   Its like putting the mask on your face before the kid;s face just before the airplane crashes into a government building.   The Red Cross has a phrase to describe safe lifeguarding: reach, throw, go.   They have other catchphrases, and as you are struggling to breath and carry stuff during search &   rescue lessons and ensure that you will make $1.50 above minimum wage next summer, you realize the book-smart taint on some of the instruction.   When confronted with a victim step 1 is ask them if they are ok. Scenarios in the tests go like this: a man is lying face down in a pool of his own blood.   his spine is ticking through ihs lung.   What do you do? The correct answer begins by inquiring, “Are you ok?”

Suck, tuck, and duck is another such gem of brilliance.   When you are making a water rescue, and a panicked victim turns on you in a desperate quest to get above water, suck a breath of air, tuck your chin, and duck underwater.   Its the most important thing you get graded on during the hand-to-hand water combat tests, as the instructors come at you like hungry zombies or screaming tweener Jonas Brother fans: suck, tuck and duck.

Whoever came up with this never met Genevieve. Genevieve doesn’t care about staying above the water, she is going to make a play. Like a water polo player, she has realized underwater is part of the game.

My neck is the most vulnerable, it makes a great hold, better than an arm cause you cant slip or get shaken off, and it often leads to rides on the back or launches across the pool. I fear for my neck, its something that would actually put me in real danger in the pool.

Another defensive technique is getting to the bottom of the pool away from her swinging feet. If you look at G, she is not a thin girl. Like her mom, and her daddy, she has strong humunculous quads, propelling size 9.5 T bricks at my skull.

She learns more every week how to swim underwater and use her body right. She goes under and reacts and surfaces ready and willing to kick your ass. She lovez the pool. We need a lifeguard, or a better buddy-system.