MyThreeDaughters

First off, anybody who gets that sub-head: Ha, ha, you’re as old as I am. How big was your hair in 1978?
Anyway, there’s been a shift-change here at Chez Wagner. Had this thing going for a while where the baby (Lilla, the Lillanator, like the Terminator, actually answers to “Nator”) was up three times a night, around 11, 2:30 and 5.
Ah, babies, aren’t they so cute? Just loving you so much that they want to kick it with you every three hours around the clock.
So we rocked and rolled with that for about more than a year/forever, then we started sending me in in the middle of the night and, being breast-less, I wasn’t of as much interest as the wife. So the baby is up less.
Shift change.
Fontaine overheard some neighbors talking about a possible fox in the neighborhood (somebody who had illegal chickens right here in the heart of the city came out one morning and found chicken salad). Now Fontaine allegedly thinks a fox is stalking her at night.
And for some reason, Elizabeth has been coming in to join us around 5 a.m. To soothe herself, she sucks her thumb. Sucks it so hard it sounds like she could suck paint off a Coke can, like the sound of a cartoon kiss.
Hard to sleep hearing that.
I’m going to get them someday.
Picture it: Teenagers. Saturday morning after a school dance. Maybe 7 a.m.
Me.
A gas-powered leaf blower.
Outside their bedroom windows.

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The other night at dinner, the two bigs were having their favorite dinner discussion: Are we having dessert after dinner?
What would it be?
Have I eaten enough to get dessert?
How much would I have to eat to get dessert? Two more bites?
Mind you, this repetitive verbal barrage usually begins after I’ve sat down and had two bites and while my wife has just scooched in her chair after pouring three different drinks (soy milk for one, two percent for another, whole milk for another) and cutting pasta into precisely the perfect length noodle for each of them.
So I had to go Dad:
<i>From now on, there’s a new rule around here at dinner: No talking about dessert until dinner is over!</i>
<i>You already made that rule,</i> Fontaine said.
Apparently, I had already gone Dad. A couple of weeks ago. And forgot. Apparently what I’ve gone is straight through the tunnel to Crazyville.
But the beauty of being Dad is, never admit you’ve gone crazy. So I said:
<i>Well, now we’re all going to start following the rule</i>.
Oh, just take your dessert. Eat some cookies. But no, there’s no whipped cream. We’re cracking down around here.

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That’s right, I’m not going to Google Images and typing in “vagina” to find an illustration for this entry. Lord knows what you’d get, and this is a work computer.
But the fact is, those things are all over this house, it’s a four-to-one ratio here. And since we taught the girls the biological term instead of making up some silly word, they don’t hesitate to use it.
Examples:
Fontaine:  Oh yeah, that’s right, I forgot Daddy doesn’t have a vagina.
Elizabeth, one of the all-time greats, at the dinner table at my parents’ house, in direct earshot of my old-school Dad: This necklace is long…it hangs all the way down to my vagina.
Elizabeth, while dropping off her older sister one day at elementary school, observing that a kindergartener’s Dad was riding the five-year-old’s bike over to the bike rack (a grown college professor, riding a kid’s bike instead of just pushing it…it did look outrageous): He’s not sitting on the seat, where you’re supposed to put your vagina.
So I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised, the other night while giving Rosebud, the 16-month-old her bath, when she looked, um, there and said…‘gina.
Vagina, vagina, vagina, vagina.
Man, this web site’s going to get some hits now.

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Before we had kids, we used to go out to eat at least once a weekend, sometimes twice. That was fun.
We used to go see bands. That was fun.
We used to sit on the porch in the early evening and rock in chairs. That was fun.
One summer, we even pronounced The Summer of Fun, and it did turn out to be.
So the other day, after the 16-month-old has learned to say “no” and say it often, my wife said: “Tomorrow, I’m going to count how many times Rosebud says <i>No</i>.”
I said, “That sounds like fun,” but really what I meant was that it didn’t sound like much fun at all.
Wife says, “I think it would be.”
Rosebud continued about the house, saying “no” to just about everything for the next several minutes and my wife looked at me:
“Tell me that wouldn’t be FUN.”
I looked at her. It seemed hard to believe that fun had deteriorated from going out to eat downtown, going to see bands and hanging out on the porch to counting the times your daughter says “no.”
There could be only one response.
“No,” I said.

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They were out of the infamous No. 2 pencils at Walgreens on Sunday. The whole row, whole stack, whole display case…gone.
Must be the parents of kids from my first-grader’s class, I thought.
See, each kid in her class was supposed to show up with four packages of 20 or 24 No. 2 pencils. You know how many pencils that is, for the class, for the year? Eighteen kids in the class, times 80 pencils each, that’s 1,440 pencils.
What’re they going to do, take every standardized test on the planet, 50 times? How many standardized test grid circles can you color in with 1,440 pencils?
Aren’t they exceeding government standards for lead exposure?
My wife was at Wal-Mart, where they were also sold out of No. 2 pencils (Shouldn’t that be a national headline: “Wal-Mart Fails to Anticipate School Supply Crush.”) My wife told a clerk how many pencils she was supposed to provide for the school supplies list.
“Are you a teacher?” the clerk asked.
(No, I don’t have a copy machine, and I’m going to duplicate “War and Peace” in pencil.)
Now, what I think is that the public schools long ago shifted this school supply burden to the teachers, and the teachers shifted it to the kids. But that’s just me. And I’m obviously crazy, because I personally haven’t used the sum total of 80 pencils in my entire life.
Oh yeah, and we’re supposed to bring them sharpened. So I guess we need an electric pencil sharpener, because as my wife points out:
Can you see us sharpening 80 pencils with one of those little plastic pencil sharpeners?

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You know, the thing is on a “batchelor” weekend, you never get the chance to do what you want in the house, so you have to get some stuff done.
Cleaned off second floor porch (Home decor tip: For a proper appearance, try to not have any table saws and drill kits stashed on a sitting porch).
Cleaned off first floor porch (Tip two: For a proper appearance, try not to leave the newspapers and paint cans and secondary vacuum cleaner on porch).
Restacked roofing slate in backyard (Hoping for payoff in resale).
Cut grass.
Vacuum house (ladies like coming home to dust-free floor).
And as always, after a hard day of getting stuff done, for the coup de grace of a “batchelor” weekend…drum roll, please…
Cook entire dinner on grill. (Vegan sister, I don’t usually recommend that readers drop out, but drop out now, Amy! Run, run!). Buy big hunk of beef at store, wrap ginormous potato in aluminum foil.
Wait for smoke.
Eat dinner.

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Wife and three girls are out of town, so I have the place to myself. When this happens, once in a while, it goes a little something like this (phrase from De La Soul and others):
Last night, I left work late and what with no reason whatever to come right home (Weird!), stopped by a friend’s place for a late hang-out-on-the-porch. The first night of the fam being away, you go to a friend’s place, maybe go to a “restaurant,” maybe have some friends over to watch sports.
You get nuts, in a middle-aged guy sort of way. You might go to bed as late as midnight, knowing you’re not going to get awakened at 2:30 and 5 a.m. by a yelling baby.
So anyway, at the friend’s house, guy named Charles says:
<i>You got the place to yourself, Larry G? What’re you gonna DO?</i>
It’s like that scene in “Risky Business,” where the brilliant shaggy guy says something like, <i>O.K., so you played the old man’s records, drove the old man’s car, now what’re you going to do? Sometimes you just have to say, What the ****?</i>
Heck, you’ll see. You’ll see how a Dad parties down when he has a whole day at home by himself.
You just wait.

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I’m not one to gloat, but:
Sorry Michael Phelps.
Many apologies, Bill Gates.
Tiger Woods? Try again next time.
Tough luck, fellers.
Tonight, as she kissed me goodnight, Fontaine said:
“Daddy, you’re the best boy in the world.”
I’ll take that. I’ll take it and write it down. I might make it into a T-shirt and wear it. I’m thinking about bumper stickers, buttons and maybe a personalized handmade decorative flag to hang in front of the house.
Pity her first boyfriend, or second, or tenth, because the best he can shoot for is second place.
Stinks being the Washington Generals, eh dude?
But hey, not my problem, because again: “Best Boy in the World.”
And I got the heck out of the room before she could tack on a “for now.”

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I used to work at the Sentence and Paragraph Factory with a guy named Jack. Jack was a real pro, got in early, knocked it out, went home. But what I remember about him was what he would put on when it was really time to knuckle down and write.
iPod? Harumph.
Foamy ’90s-era headphones? Don’t kid.
Jack covered the military, and somewhere along the way had acquired a set of the ear covers that the signalmen wear when they wave in jets to land on an aircraft carrier.
Jack strapped those things on.
Now, an editor will walk up to a reporter at any time with a question: When the reporter is typing (an e-mail to her mom), when the reporter is on the phone talking (to his wife about dinner plans), when the reporter has an iPod on (to imply deep concentration).
But clamp on a pair of signalman’s headphones, and it says one thing to an approaching editor: “I’m busy, go away.”
The headphones said it, so Jack didn’t have to.
Which brings me, finally, to tonight’s point. Two good nights out of about eight since we went the “cry it out” route.
The two bigs, the wife and myself are starting to think about getting some of those signalman’s ear covers so we can get some sleep.
Pretty sure that an F-18 Hornet landing on a ship is louder than a screaming baby. But there are times that I wonder.

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About a year ago, a friend of of mine told me that when he and his daughter go to a Japanese restaurant, they like to get the edamame.
Pronunciation: Ed-uh-mah-may.
I said, What?
He went on to describe a gastonomic delight.
We had some one time. It was cool. Cooked soy beans in the husk with chunky salt on the outside. Six bucks.
Again, it was good, but I also decided that in Japanese <i>edamame</i> means: “Yankee pays too much for unhusked soy beans.”
So anyway, wife got some frozen at Trader Joe’s and we ate it. (It’s kind of like eating steamed crabs. They taste great, but by the time you pick ’em, you can eat a ton and still be hungry. But anytime you get to eat salt, that’s lots of fun for me.)
Anyway, the other night we were going to eat some more, and wife opened the freezer and the 16-month-old said, “edamame.”
She says “Mommy” and “Daddy” and “up” and “no” and “edamame.”
I never heard of edamame until a year ago, and I never ate a green vegetable until I was 30, but the six-year-old eats hummus and they all eat yogurt and wheat germ and the four-year-old is darned near a vegetarian and sometimes I just wonder what the heck happened to hamburgers and hot dogs and french fries?
Edamame.
Allow me to twist a joke. What’s the difference between soy beans and edamame?
About three dollars a pound.

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