Dad Stuff

One of the things I got Lias for his second birthday was a small Siku toy car; the thank-you note, as dictated by Lias, contained the phrase “The car goes.”

A wonderfully Zen meditation on the nature of cars and car-ness; the essence of things.

Ada, on the other hand, is investigating the nature of being and identity: she is spending time with her Bob the Builder jigsaw puzzle removing Scoop’s eyes and announcing, “Scoop is not here.” Then she puts they eyes back in and declares, “Scoop is here. He has his eyes.”

Two year olds are clearly in touch with the deep and important questions of philisophy. Or philosophy departments are refuges for the developmentally arrested. I leave it to the reader to determine which is the case.

…but to praise them.

I have been hankering for a new set of jeans for Ada for a while, but previous shopping efforts have proven most unsatisfactory. The words “girl” and “jeans” in the same sentence quickly condemn one’s offspring to rows of jeans embroidered with pink butterflies and purple ballerinas. If you’re lucky.

If you aren’t, they’re even less tasteful.

I am not of the opinion, in general, of the opinion that two year olds require vigorous gender marking. This has made searching for some nice jeans a rather vexing experience.

Anyway, I stopped in at Kid Republic while driving through Thorndon on the off-chance, and lo! I was rewarded. I ambled in, explained to the staff that I wanted jeans for my daughter, who was a tall two-and-a-half year old, about a metre tall, and showed them one of her coats (“It’s full length on her”) and explained she’d be out of nappies soonish. With each new piece of information the sales staff grabbed and discarded jeans from the range. The range, I note, which had a wide variety of styles and colours and included many a pair with no over-the-top decoration.

Jeans fitted perfectly, too.