MyThreeDaughters

I love it on the HBO show “Flight of the Conchords” when band’s manager refers to the one fan on their mailing list as “The Fan Base.”

Now, anyone who wants to join the MyThreeDaughters.com “Fan Base” can do so. Scroll down the blog, and on the righthand side, click on the “Networked Blogs” button.

You will see that the site has THREE times as many fans as the Conchords. OK, so three fans. I think you have to be on Facebook to do this, but hey, you have to be on FB to breathe these days.

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We live on the wrong side of the tracks here, so fairly often we get hung up by 100-car long coal trains.

It happens going to work, taking the girls to school, to softball games, trying to get to the grocery store. I swear – yeah, sometimes literally swear – that the mega-corporation headquartered here sends a train through the city every day near 5 p.m. to choke traffic and let everyone know who owns what.

Within the family, the girls have different attitudes about getting hosed by the mega-corp’s trains.

Last year, when she was four, Elizabeth and I were on the way to pre-school, taking our chances by going down one of the streets that doesn’t have a tunnel underpass. As usual, we were playing brinksmanship with the school’s 9 a.m. start.

“I sure hope we don’t get caught by a train,” I told Elizabeth.

“If you don’t want there to be a train, you just have to believe that there won’t be a train,” said the go-with-the-flow girls’ girl.

On that day, we believed – and there was no train.

A week or so ago, Fontaine and I were heading back from one of her softball games.

“I sure hope we don’t get caught by a train,” I said. Just one fatalistic pessimist talking to another fatalistic pessimist.

I told Fontaine, “Well, you know what Elizabeth said about trains.”

She thought for a moment. Being the first-born, the second-born sure as heck wasn’t about to have a clever saying without her having one.

“You know what I say?” Fontaine said.

No, what?

“If there’s a train, there’s a train.”

Yup.

And if you are hosed, you are hosed.

Dylan anyone?

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Rosebud has shown no signs in her first three years of being a Cooperator.

She resists, by screaming, having her diaper changed, getting into the car seat, getting out of the car seat, putting clothes on, taking clothes off, eating.

Now, she’s got a new method.

Sitting down to read books before bed, she first stalled by refusing to choose one. So I picked one for her.

“You can’t read that,” she said. “It’s locked.”

Locked? Holy cow, well, I’ll pick another one.

“That one’s locked, too,” she said.

As I reached for a third, she announced, “All the books are locked.”

Oh my, all the books are locked? Well, I guess I’ll just put you right in the crib, since we can’t read any books.

She didn’t pause.

“We can read this book,” she said, grabbing one quickly. “I have the key.”

So she unlocked the book and we read it. I asked if I could get a copy of the key, but apparently not – there’s some sort of finger-print scanner in the key that prevents anyone but her from using it.

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Well, it seems young Elizabeth has a new career path. At the wee age of five and a half, she has shown clear signs of either becoming a scientist who invents a world-changing concoction…or perhaps a hell of a bartender.

When Wife was working Saturday night at a different restaurant, “the girls and I decided” that instead of going to some ultra-kid-friendly burrito place (that despite previous mentions — Welcome to Moe’s — refuses to shell over big bucks to MTD.com as an advertiser), we’d go to one of my favorite restaurants (pubs) to get the girls some popcorn shrimp (and me a beer).

It was then, right at the table, and I wasn’t paying much attention at first, but Elizabeth began combining things in a little cup. She squeezed a maraschino cherry, and a lemon, and some juice, mashed juice out of a tomato slice, threw in a corner of a pickle, and then some sugar.

Then we each had to taste it. I have to say, it tasted a lot like, like, like….wet sugar.

We rode home talking about that lovely springtime drink, and the girls came home and Fontaine helped Elizabeth list the ingredients: so as to immortalize this surprisingly sugary and shockingly not-vomit-inducing creation.

It was such a mark of the evening that we all told Wife about it the next morning at breakfast. And after Fontaine read off the ingredients of this drink, Elizabeth piped in in her very loud monotone voice:

“Oh yeah, and some PIECES OF PAPER!”

I think my stomach’s starting to hurt a little.

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We’re really going to start getting massive Internet hit, because after a previous post about breasts, which I heard was  a popular search term, we’re getting even more personal.

As you know, “boys” are outnumbered by “girls” in our house by a score of one to four. It’s both a ratio and an actual number. So the girls don’t see a lot of boy private parts.

Two weeks ago, Rosebud watched my brother change the diaper of her two-year-old cousin, a boy.

Rosebud was apparently very observant, though she didn’t quite know what she was seeing. She later told me, while wrinkling up her nose in a trademark Rosebud way: “Daddy, I didn’t like that thing sticking out of Luke’s vagina.”

Yeah, good girl, you keep not liking those things sticking out of boys’ vaginas…for the next couple of decades at least.

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Oh, wrong kind of muscles.

So the talkative two-year-old has somehow come to the understanding that women’s breasts are “muscles.”

That’s what she calls ‘em. Sure, it’s inaccurate, but then again it’s way more polite than: boobs, knockers, rack, headlights, jugs, hooters, tatas (for pete’s sake, breast cancer awareness people), or the one that begins with “t” and ends with “its.”

Wife, whose muscles shall remain uncommented upon in this space, doesn’t like the slang words for body parts and tries to teach the girls the real words. It’s a noble effort. It’s also led to some stunning comments from the girls, like the time at about age three when Elizabeth informed a dinner table full of folks, including my father, that her necklace was “so long it hangs all the way down to my vagina.”  And another time, when Wife was walking out of the house with the girls and I don’t know what they were talking about, but I heard Fontaine say, “That’s right, I forgot that Daddy doesn’t have a vagina.”

Anyway, the other day at pre-school, Rosebud evidently informed a woman: “You have big muscles.”

That evening, Wife set about educating Rosebud that “muscles” are called “breasts.” She explained to the older two girls: “We don’t want Rosebud going around telling women they have big muscles, do we?”

Fontaine thought about it for a moment: “So do we want her telling women that they have big BREASTS?”

Touche’. “Muscles,” it is.

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It saddens me to announce that I heard a new term the other day that, well, it saddened me.

Wife didn’t think much of it at first…she herself has sunken so far into the depths of this societal scourge that she can hardly recognize it.

I myself knew of the on-going problems with teen pregnancies, and I knew that girls were maturing at younger ages than previous generations, but I was flabbergasted to hear this term — to learn just how dire the situation had become.

My wife, she said, had a meeting at Pre-school with the other “Two-year-old Moms.”

Oh Lordy, the babies are having babies. Those toddlers have no idea what responsibilities lie ahead. At two years old, they should only be worried about potty training and pulling siblings hair and dumping juice on the floor, but now they have to push all that aside.

“Two-year-old Moms…”

Well, one positive note: These “Two-year-old Moms,” most of them are already married to “Two-year-old Dads.” I think the Two-year-old Dads gather at the pub.

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Men enjoy making themselves useful at labor camp

In light of Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker’s recent announcement that she’s a sexist…

Shovels. Men want shovels, the bigger the better, Parker wrote in her column, “Men: The Original Shovel-Ready Project.”

We just want to be useful, Parker thunk, so all the snow in D.C. has been great, because now there’s a reason for allowing men to take up all this oxygen we’ve been using.

“Add to the cultural shifts our recent economic woes, which have left more men than women without jobs, and men are all the more riveted by opportunities to be useful.”

Oh, YEAH, I bet the men of Washington, D.C., LOVED shoveling two-foot deep snow for hours on end in sub-freezing temperatures. Good to be useful.

It’s a huge secret, but men also love being useful in other ways, like:

Jacking the car up and moving the front tires to the back and the back tires to the front, so you, Kathleen, can have a smoother ride to the latte shoppe.

Rolling the garbage and recycling bins to the curb (just showing off the ol’ master’s degree, Kathleen, so you don’t have to).

Reaching our hands into the back of the toilet when the chain holding up that other thing gets stuck (turns you on, doesn’t it Kathleen, when us men-folk have toilet water dripping from our hands).

Finally moving that bush that the previous owners left to the back corner of the yard (like you asked last spring, Kathleen).

And, again, yes, shoveling snow…so you, Kathleen, can stay in the house and watch a man shoveling your walk, and write about it, and pretend to be an enlightened columnist.

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Now I know why that name struck me wrong (See previous post). My sister, who works for an animal welfare group, notes that — luckily for the purpose of my new car — the name “The Neuter Scooter” is already taken. Though, I suppose, what we’re talking about here are homonyms (neuter/newter).

So if you see this thing coming, might want to tuck in the tail and run.

If you see ME coming in the Newter Scooter, just wave.

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