Hello Roo, its Daddy again.
You’re another year older and I’m packing another year’s worth of close calls, narrow escapes and lucky breaks. Well, that and an expanding number of white hairs that your grandfather is oh so happy to point out when he comes to visit.
It was a difficult year but thankfully I think we did a pretty good job shielding you from the worst of it.
I usually cringe when I see people writing self-deprecating posts on Facebook (hey, is that still a thing whenever you’re reading this?) about how terrible 2012 was and how glad they are that it’s over. That kind of public display of negativity always feels suspiciously like someone trolling for comments. No, I prefer to do all that on a blog instead, much classier that way. But truth be told, when the ball dropped on New Year’s Eve your Mom and I said ‘Thank God that’s over’ and never looked back.
We lost your great-granddad and your sister this year. Losing them once was hard, but it was like losing them all over again when you started to forget. When you stopped rubbing your mom’s belly and saying ‘baby in here’ it was hard. And when you started looking at pictures of you with your great-grandad and saying ‘who’s that?’ it churned up lots of emotions.
I want to take a minute to tell you how proud I was of you in how you handled your great-grandad being in the hospital. You were two, which is way too young to understand what was happening. But I know it was hard for me to see my grandfather wasting away in a hospital bed, getting thinner and weaker with every visit and being hooked up to an expanding array of medical equipment. It was a very visceral image. But it never even slowed you down. You chattered away, offered pretend medicine to make him feel better always had lots of hugs and kisses. I’m sure it made him feel better and I know it helped me out a lot.
Your g-grandfather was one of the greatest men I ever had the pleasure of knowing. He had to deal with a lot of his own tragedy and hardship throughout his life but he was always kind and generous to a fault. He was a gentle giant and the man responsible for at least three generation’s worth of ‘Van Loon head’s.’ Whenever I find myself angry or inclined to take the low road I try to remember him and live by his example. I don’t succeed as often as I like, but it helps nonetheless.
What else? Ah. Let us discuss your growing and worrisome addiction to grilled cheese. You would eat grilled cheese for breakfast, lunch and dinner if I let you. And really, that’s on me. I have my own weakness for grilled cheese so I made conscious effort to try and slip it into your diet. Well, I succeeded but now the student has surpassed the teacher and now I spend every night driving you home from day care trying to knock you off the grilled cheese track and get you excited about other foods. To no avail.
You don’t have a ‘thing’ yet. And I keep looking for one or trying to expose you to one. Numbers you’re all on top of. Letters. Not so much. You’re down with the letters ‘c’, because that’s what your name starts with, and the letter ‘o’, because, well, it’s the letter ‘o’ and it’s easy to spot. Driving has become a challenge because every time you see the letter ‘c’ on a billboard or a car you’ll screech at the top of your lungs until someone in the car also finds that same damn letter. (ONLY SOME OF US ARE DRIVING AND CAN’T CRANE OUR NECKS LOOKING FOR ONE LETTER AND CAUSING US TO CRASH TO OUR DOOOOoooOOM). Anyway, sports are also not your thing, unless you count cheering for me on the sidelines when I play Ultimate - ‘Go Daddy Go!’. You’re learning to throw a Frisbee yourself, but right now all you’ve managed is the two hand smash into Daddy’s shins. Daddy loves you very much.
You are swimming up a storm though so maybe that’s your thing. You’re a couple weeks away from getting your first swim badge. And at the cottage this summer you were utterly fearless in the lake. At the beginning of the week you didn’t even want to get in the water, by Friday you were in there trying to paddle around with a life jacket. Every morning before breakfast you’d try to wheedle and beg or demand that we all go down to the beach so you could play in the water.
Musically I’ve been playing you a lot of Caspar Babypants. ‘Run Baby Run’ is your favourite. Babypants is actually the lead singer of a band that Daddy likes, so this way I get to pretend that The Presidents of the United States of America are still making music and you get age appropriate tunage. Its win-win. And frankly, I’ve had it up to hear with kids songs actually sung by kids. I get a weird creep VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED vibe every time I hear that stuff. You don’t seem to have a burning desire to listen to music, so it’s always a bit of a surprise whenever you sing along with the tune (I didn’t even know you were listening!).
You’ve definitely got the Faulkner TV gene. If it was up to you it would be all CAILLOU all the time. With maybe a little DORA and JAKE AND THE NEVERLAND PIRATES to break up the monotony. So I implemented a little token scheme (two a day) that’s slowed down your TV watching considerably. And hats off to you, when your tokens are gone you stop asking to watch TV. I know if it was me at your age I’d be keeping up an endless stream of ‘please can I watch more TV, please can I watch more’.
Oh, BARBIE is bull by the way. No more BARBIE on Daddy’s watch. Just watching one of those BARBIE movies was enough to send me over the bend. I’ve never seen a kids film that glorifies women in traditional roles more than that movie. And I’m pretty sure all of them end with some kind of wedding. Disney movies are kind of hit and miss on that front as well. There are lots of great Disney movies and then a handful where the only thing the female protagonist wants is to get married to the handsome prince. The newer the movie the more balanced the message is. But some of the older films are downright throwbacks.
And I’m bummed to see that I am becoming The Man. Not in the good ‘slip me some skin’ kinda of way either. No, I’m the totalitarian, ‘eatyourveggiesbecausesoonitwillbebathtimeandgetbackinyourchairyoungladyunlessyoudon’twantdessertandI’msorryyoudon’tlikethesoupbecausethat’sallthatwe’reofferingandohmygodI’vebecomemyparents’ kind of Man.
The Man wants you follow the rules. The Man gets you to do things that are good for you, not just fun for you. The Man sets limits and restrictions and is deaf to your pleas to that the cat likes it when you football tackle him. The Man is everything you swore you wouldn’t become.
99.9 per cent of the angry things that I shouted at my parents about when I was a teenager have sadly not come to pass. I have decided not to let you stay up all night eating ice cream and watching TV. (And trust me, I WANT to let you do that.) Instead you will play outside dagnabbit or do something educational and you will like it.
Your grandparents get to be the kind of parents I always wanted them to be when I was a boy, providing a seemingly endless supply of toys and candy and games without any rules or restrictions.
I’ve had to learn how to you say no to you without that word ever passing my lips. Because the second you hear me say no we’re in for a fight. And over three years you’ve developed quite the arsenal of tools when it comes to getting what you want.
When you yell and scream I want to yell and scream right back. When it comes to conflict resolution I’m all fight, no flight. But I can’t bring that mindset to arguments with you because I am The Man. And sometimes The Man’s job is to calmly sit there and take toddler sized buckets of anger until you wear yourself out. Because emotions can be tricky buggers at any age and boy do I get that.
And then, through your sniffles, you’ll hug me and kiss me and tell me that you love me, that you’re sorry and that you miss me and inside my heart will be melting into a puddle of goo. At which point I feel like anything but The Man.
You’ve reached the stage where you can make decisions all on your own. And your decisions are entirely based on ‘what do I want in this particular moment in time’ and not ‘how much will this particular act of destruction cost Mommy and Daddy’ or, ‘The future, what’s that?’ My job is steer you away from the dangerous options, let you do the silly or harmless things and make judgment calls on a whole host of decisions that could go either way.
It’s the hoariest of clichés, I don’t let you do some things not because I’m a tyrannical dictator, but because I’m trying to balance your personal freedom against your personal wellbeing.
I think 2013 is going to be an interesting year for all of us.
Love,
Daddy.
