Learning Together

My daughter has an ear infection, but it hasn’t caused her to lose her sense of humor.

Today, she told me a joke she learned from a cartoon.

Q. How do we know the ocean is friendly?

A. Because it waves!

Not bad!

Later, in the car, she was playing “I spy” with her mom, when she pulled the following prank.

Daughter: I spy, with my little eye, something brown.

Wife: The dirt?

Daughter: No.

Wife: That car?

Daughter: No.

Wife: That cow?

Daughter: No.

Wife: I give up. What is it?

Daughter: A potato! [cackling gleefully]

Wife: There wasn’t a potato around! [starting to laugh herself]

Daughter: I know! [guffawing] Potato!

Needless to say, that was the last round of “I Spy.” We weren’t going to be able to top that one.

My daughter loves the two books she currently has checked out from the school library. One is about a sumo-wrestler’s cat. The other is about a little cow named Raisin. She has asked me to scan the books because she has to return them soon. This is what the opening pages of the cow book like.

My wife has had to read this book to my daughter every night for the past two weeks. It’s about a baby cow who wants to remain the center of attention. I wonder if my daughter sees herself in little Raisin.

When my daughter turned six last month, I made a video compilation of great moments from our daughter’s last year.

I’ve been sending it to friends for the past month, and the video has been a blessing to them. Our daughter is so full of life that even short clips of her dancing, singing, and preaching are inspiring.

She was a blessing to me today. Her prayer book, which she showed me today, included the following pictures.

These are pictures from our daughter’s school: a friend and the class pet.

She is learning to pray for those around her. I will join her in asking for God’s blessings on her friend and the fish…and on my daughter to continue to pray.

My daughter wants some money to buy a new Barbie. She heard that chores get repaid for money. Thus, this list…

Today, I made this stipulation: there has to be some chores she does no matter what as part of the family. Incentivizing basic decorum is a recipe for disaster.

We’ll see how we navigate the divide between rewarding her initiative and not tainting basic decency with pocket change.

My wife put up a barn sign in our kitchen last week. This is what it says.

It’s true. My wife and daughter DO dance in the kitchen.

Tonight, they’ve rocked out to “Eye of the Tiger” and “It’s The End of the World” and Sly’s “Thank You” and “Shake Your Groove Thing.”

My daughter has even given her and my wife a name: The Party Sisters.

She’s been playing emcee and performer complete with a broom as a mic and a stool as a stage.

It’s a post-school musical education.

So here we go. I was anticipating more posts like this, but we’re seven weeks into the semester before this first one.

Here’s a song my daughter sings each week at school.

https://youtu.be/f6cmXLzxfZE

The song contains truth…

…but leaves out the punchline.

Who are you loved by?

Who created you to be unique?

Who do you need to have a relationship to truly be who you were made to be?

And so…when my daughter sings this song…that will be my message.

And that’s the work of raising a Christian daughter in a world where the supposed answers leave out the real solution.

My daughter loves Fridays because she gets to go to music class.

She was regaling me at 7:15am with a song about kangaroos and wallabies, one she learned last week in music class and hoped to sing later in the day (spoiler: she did).

This evening, she’s mixing songs she learned with ones she’s written.

One of the former goes thusly:

Have you ever heard of pumpkin bones

Pumpkin bones

Pumpkin bones?

Have you ever heard of pumpkin bones

early in the morning?

She began to sing it with a fake British accent after a few minutes.

Then came a more elaborate one of her own design that started familiarly and soon took a turn:

Ring around the rosies

Pocket full of posies

We climb up the ladder

And I push you down the slide

I slide down the pole

But you stay up high

Then we go and get on the see saw. See?

Then we take a break from playing.

We’ll see how many of these ditties last longer in her memory longer than tonight and if the ones that lost are her own creation or the ones she’s learned from school.

My daughter hasn’t touched the piano in a few weeks. Today, she asked to have our keyboard plugged in, and she plugged away at “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” for the next fifteen minutes.

She made a lot of mistakes.

She got really frustrated.

But she kept at it.

Eventually, I went in and asked her if I could help.

“I can’t find the final sound.”

Ah. She had been playing from memory, even though the note sheet was in front of her.

I played the song for her, and she proceeded to reel it off without an error.

We’ll see if she keeps it up. If she shows interest for a solid week, I’ll offer more help or the notes for a song of her choice.

Today is the birthday of a dear friend of mine.

I was reminded of him this past weekend because of something my daughter said.

She showed me one of her pictures, and I said, “LOVE IT!”

Without missing a beat, she responded, “WANT MORE OF IT!”

My friend and I exchanged this call and response many times as graduate students at the University of Kentucky. I don’t know if it was any less hokey when we were in our 20s than it is now, but that short couplet will always remind me of him.

More than being a personal reminder of my friend, however, the phrase has, over time, become my default way of giving praise.

From the time our daughter was old enough to share her pictures or catch a football or clean up her room, I would respond with a hearty, “LOVE IT! WANT MORE OF IT!” I’ve passed a part of my friend on to my daughter. She has never met my friend, but she carries with her one of his verbal trademarks.

The irony, of course, is that my friend is one of the best writers I know, so her only having six words of his in her mind is painfully short of who he actually is.

Still, every time I hear her say “WANT MORE OF IT!” it will remind me of how much my daughter listens to what I say and how much of what I say is the product of the wonderful people in my life.

Who knows. One of these days, I may start passing on the things she says.