My Little Angel

Sometimes when I get irritated with Zoe I have to remind myself that she is only two. Suddenly I find myself looking at those irritants with amusement. For instance, Zoe has a non-spill bubbles toy that she likes to have the top removed, making it into a sure bet that she will spill it. So my choices are a screaming child or soap spilled on the porch (for obvious reasons bubbles are an outside-only toy). So, I take the top off and a few minutes later she knocks it off the bench. She’s upset but I tell her it’s okay and refill the bubble container. She picks up where she lefts off, but she is in her bare feet which are now coated in slippery bubbles, as is the porch she is standing on. Woops, out go her feet from under her, and now she is sitting in the wet, soapy puddle; and crying because she fell. Think of how much more peaceful my time with her would have been if she had just kept the top on the bubbles. And even though I could have predicted the entire chin of events, it was amusing in retrospect.

I’ve discovered that Zoe understands Portuguese. Our house cleaners are Brazilian and like to hug and hold Zoe, and one of the women only speaks Portuguese. Today she asked Zoe, in Portuguese, where her doll was and Zoe pointed toward the windowsill, where the doll indeed was. I could run other experiments, but for now I will just assume that she understands Portuguese.

I would have thought she was too young, but the words poop and bum can make her laugh so hard she gets a case of hiccups. And if she passes gas she gets this big grin and yells ‘fart’. Until proven otherwise I’m going to blame Alison for Zoe’s sense of humor.

Zoe is playing with my phone (because I made the mistake of putting it down). I have a smart phone with a removable stylus. I ordered special styluses that also have a small pen built into them. We are out on the porch and I told Zoe that she could use my phone but DO NOT REMOVE THE STYLUS because it will fall (not ‘might’ fall) through the cracks on the porch. So she walks the three steps into the house and removes the stylus, then walks back outside and drops it onto the porch and through a crack.

Here are a few things that I find myself doing as a father that I never would have dreamed I would be doing.
• Sniffing her behind to see if there is a poop.
• Holding out my hand to receive a have chewed piece of food that she finds yucky.
• Singing ‘Wheels on the Bus’ in public spaces.

‘Life with Zoe: The Second Year’ is hot off the press at my Blurb.com bookstore (www.blurb.com/user/store/dbglass)

See all the recent (and older) photos of Zoe at picasaweb.google.com/dbglass