daddyville

This is such a nice age that my little girl is in right now. She's just about to be 4 1/2 years old and she is just the most inquisitive, lovely child. Conversations have done nothing but become more complex and multi-dimensional. She is really starting to retain things that we 'teach' her. It seems to be taking fewer 'dry runs' through a process and 'sticking' sooner. This is so pleasant for me because I feel like I am talking less with a 'wall' and more with a person. :) How nice, huh? It makes me chuckle to think of how many times in a given day that I have been accustomed to repeating the same phrases over and over and over again.....and over... Ok, you get it now. Hehe.

I was just reflecting earlier today about how someone told me a few years ago, when Shayla would've been 2 1/2, that I was really going to like the 4-9 year old age set and how their developing mannerisms and self-awareness is just so precious and beautiful as it slowly blossoms out of the kernel from whence it begins like some kind of time lapse photography viewed through a 'fish eye' lens off of a remote world. They were right. It's an incredibly amazing series of phases, the machinery of which, gallops along in slow motion before your very eyes, one phase overlapping and feathering into the next one after the other, onward into your future together. Lovely......

We have occasionally trimmed our little girl's hair since she was born. That has usually been me: trimming the bangs and the back of her hair every so often. She's four and almost 1/2 years old at this point. Just a couple of days ago her mother decided to give it a whirl. She did a good job. Once again we just trimmed her bangs and the length in the back. We were all happy with how it looked, but it gave Shayla an additional idea: to try it herself. So yesterday, I think it was, she decided to make a few adjustments since the scissors were already out and everything. The 'adjustment' that she made was so small it took us a day to notice that something was different. I was the first to notice that the hair on the left cheek and over the left ear was a fair amount shorter than that on the other side. I pointed it out to mommy. Initially, we both thought that it had been a miscalculation on mommy's part as it wasn't severely drastic, but....little did we know that That was about to change. We proceeded to talk about how it wasn't 'even' on both sides and that we should address that within the next couple of days, yada yada yada.
Shayla then disappears and, surprisingly, we think nothing of it. Well, she goes and finds some scissors somewhere and then comes back out on to the porch to show us what an excellent adjustment she has just made. "Ah, okay.... So you want a new-wave hair style then in 2011, huh?", I say to her as I am laughing at our slow uptake of the situation. Her parents are slow on the cognitive end today. What we how have is an extreme and more advanced difference between the length of hair on the left side vs. the right side of her head. A definite ' must do something about that today' kind of situation. It looked like a new wave mullet-meets-bowl-contrasting-art-hair-piece. It was awesome. I thought about taking a picture, but I didn't want her to feel bad or overly self conscious, so I didn't. I was just trying not to laugh.

Ok. Well, off to the barber we go... This is a requisite experience for all of us as we grow up, isn't it? I think so. I'm trying to remember mine and I can't remember if I did this or not. I'll guess I'll have to ask my mom. Oh well, toodle-ee-doo, off to the barber we go. We'll see y'all 'round the bend....

Well, my 4 1/2 year old daughter now seems to be putting it together: she swung solo for the first time today from start to finish. Yay Shayla!

Parenting can be a little nerve wracking, to put it mildly. After the play-date that Shayla and her friend had last Thursday, I wasn't sure whether or not the two girls were actually going to continue to develop their friendship. No parent wants that process to be painful or difficult for their child. It should be fun and enjoyable for both kids, not excessive tears, hurt feelings and crying. As it is, their friendship is still in the formation stage and at this age (3.5-4.5 yrs.) they develop and change so quickly that a year's difference in age can be substantial at certain times and in certain applications, and in other instances, it's absolutely nothing. Parents have to be very flexible. It's wild, to me, just how much so. I have so much to learn here. I only hope that it turns out to be as gentle as I can allow it to be.

I am happy that it looks like Shayla and Helena's friendship may stick around for a bit. That would be good for both of the girls, I think. It's a foreign thing for me to be the default 'manager' of another's friendships. It's naturally occurring within the cells of any parent for sure, and yet perceived from a certain angle, it's still a little odd for me. I guess you just kind of get used to it, until they eventually tell you years later that it's "none of your business" and by that time, 'minding your own business' has probably become a foreign practice in itself, as it should be. I can see it already. I suppose it's not a bad idea to try and see the humor in that now: the opportunity may not be so readily available later. Ha ha.

Friendships....Relationships...Relations....those ships and how they fare together on the sea of life is so critical to our well being and our overall health as humans that it makes me really happy to see my daughter fairing well.