A conversation with M-: What good's education if you can't show it off?

The following exchange with my 3-year-old daughter M- came in the midst of a completely unrelated conversation between my wife J- and me in the car the other day:

(J- and I discussing something boring like taxes, or kitchen remodeling)

M (loudly interrupting): BABY gorillas are nice. (ominously) But NOT silverbacks.....

Me: ... Huh? ...M-, did you learn about gorillas in preschool today??

M- (satisfiedly): YESsirrr.

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You may enjoy my previous M- conversations, (6YO son) D- conversations, and (wife) J- conversations.

PSA: Child Passenger Safety week

Sorry, this post is not sarcastic, for once. It's an actual Public Service Announcement.

I wanted to let everyone know it's National Seat Check Saturday today in America, and over the coming week the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is trying to raise awareness of the subpar safety level of children in our cars.

I normally don't do this kind of thing, but since I've already spent roughly 10% of my predicted lifespan installing, uninstalling, and reinstalling carseats, I consider myself a bit of an aficionado, and the subject is near and dear to my heart.

I've seen some pretty ridiculous "installations" in other people's cars in the past, and it always makes me itch to offer help or suggestions for the sake of the kids. It can't hurt to have someone check to make sure you're installing your carseats correctly, right?

Here's a page where you can find the carseat inspection stations in your area: http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/CPS/CPSfitting/index.cfm

And here's a little video they made for this event:

Even a golden raisin shower is gross

The other day, while I was adjusting my 5-year-old son D-'s booster carseat, I heard an odd rattling sound. Assuming it must be filled with crayons and an assortment of small rocks that had once been in the cupholders, I began trying, not unlike a chimpanzee, to find an access point to the inside of this thing.

Only once I started shaking it upside down with the cupholders partway out did a flurry of rock-hard golden raisins of mysterious origin begin raining down across the seat and floor of the car.

I stopped shaking to gather up this first batch and hand them to D- before beginning another round. His response to all this trouble he'd caused? An excited, "Can I eat them?"

When will this stop?

Proof I didn't kill my children

[...or, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Screams"]

Well, my computer decided to break down Thursday, and in fact it's still out of commission until I can find my Windows CD, so here you get Friday's promised picture post on Monday.

Here's a short summary of the trip home in (representative) pictures.

We had a little drive across Maine and New Hampshire, stopped to see Nanna and Poppa in Rhode Island, got in jammies, and we'll surely be there in no time, right? Why not celebrate by doing our best Sean Connery impressions?

It's all laughs and smiles until someone gets cranky:

For those trapped in a five-point harness, this is a good stress-reducing position to assume for at least 40% of the time, to keep your circulation going so you can get maximum screaming power from what meager foodstuffs you're likely to be offered.

For those trapped in a relatively comfortable booster seat with a mere shoulder belt (who would never, ever, ever deliberately arm and then set off a Toddler Bomb), this would be the ideal posture-- furious concentration on something else almost as loud and annoying, piped directly into your ear holes:

If the option to get out of the car more than the doctor-recommended 14 times an hour is firmly withheld from you, you must be sure to stretch often and look as bored as possible while doing so:

In between reps, if no other activity is offered to you, just pretend to read until that ability spontaneously manifests itself:

Once you're again done with that, don't be surprised if your traveling companions/jailers playfully attempt to assuage their guilt by forging evidence that everyone has been having a really great time and no international anti-torture laws were being broken:

Console yourself that once the sun goes down, the toddler vampires have free reign, and they make pathetic wandering parents their playthings, biting their heads off like so many Winnie-the-Pooh animal crackers.

Also, only then is the portable DVD player allowed to return to its rightful throne on the front armrest, ruling as a benevolent Pixar-spewing overlord, appointed for life by acclamation.

And all will once again be right with the world, until those mutinous parents, who hate anything that makes children smile, pull the stupid car into the stupid garage and ruin all the fun.

Eyes on the prize

I have reason to believe that my daughter, M-, may be desperately trying to eat her way to a forward-facing carseat.

She is an extremely willful child, but I'm happy to say she seems to be learning that tiny balled fists being what they may, she can't scream her way to getting what she wants. So now she eats.

The backstory: In the chaos and confusion of trying to install two carseats in my parents' car on our way to the airport a few weeks before M-'s first birthday, I accidentally installed her carseat facing forwards instead of backwards, as recommended before age 1 and/or 20 pounds. This didn't strike me until we started driving, but given that we didn't want to risk missing our plane and that she looked pretty safe in the seat (not like a 16-inch softball on a sack of sugar with a Jell-o neck, like during the first few months), I let her be.

I cannot do justice to the looks of wonder and unexplained giggles that frequently radiated from that seat during the magical 20-minute ride, so I won't even try.

Since we got back from our trip, she has resisted being set into her usual backward-facing seat by any means available to her, including crying and stiffening her body while arching her back. Whenever she gets a glimpse (usually upside down) of the front seat, she shouts with glee, attempting to address anyone she sees up there.

After several trips starting like this when we got back, she began eating voraciously, essentially not ceasing all day to cram anything she could find into her cry-hole. This is because shortly after we got back, she turned one, but since she was sick for over a week around that time, she is still shy of the required 20 pounds. (We plan to make her wait till she's safely over that level, but don't tell her that.)

She has been plowing through her remaining baby formula, downing jars of food, shoveling in baby cereal, and even licking her hand and dunking it into piles of grownup cereal, for more efficient stuffing of said cry-hole. It's all I can do to get in a couple hours of videogames a day.

I've just got to get her feeding herself more reliably and less messily, so I can set up the baby gate in the kitchen and leave her there with the pantry door open for a little while each day, so D- and I can read and relax..... and play more Super Paper Mario.