My first kid post ever

One of my favorite blogs is Bill Harris' blog Dubious Quality. He writes mainly about sports, family, and computer games. But he does it in a consistently engaging and wry way that makes his posts a pleasure to read. If I can write half as well as he does, I'll be doing fine.

He's got a son, Eli, about whom he posts a lot. He gives Eli a version number -- "Eli 3.5", "Eli 5.11" -- year and month of Eli's age. It's helpful, because if you've been around young kids at all you know that their age is a huge part of who they are; they change so fast that knowing their age is pretty important.

I was considering stealing his idea, but this morning I told my wife Michelle, "You know that blogger who writes about his son Eli? I'm thinking of writing about our kids like that."

"Well, make sure you do it your own way!" she said. How did she know what I was thinking?

Humph, so much for ripping off Bill. So I'll have to do something clunkier, at least for now.

In any case, welcome to my first post about my kids! It won't be the last.....

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My daughter Sophie is two and a half. She's starting to be very clear about what she wants to do and when. She's always been good with language, and now she's saying what's on her mind -- and demanding things -- very, very, very forthrightly. Any parent of two- or three-year-olds knows what I'm talking about.

For instance, this morning I was on wake-up duty. I went into her room in my robe and chatted with her as she was lying in her crib.

"What's Mommy doing?" she asked.

"Mommy's a sleeeeper," I said. (Which was true; Michelle is almost eight months pregnant, and that means Mom gets to sleep in.)

"Want to go SEE her!"

"We're going to let her sleep a bit more, sweetie."

"Want to open the door!" (to her bedroom.)

"What would you do then?"

"Want to POUND on her!"

She really means gently wake her up. Honest.

Then, later, at breakfast, she was in her booster seat, and she pointed into the kitchen. "What's THAT?"

"This?" I held up the tomato juice.

"Yeah!"

"It's tomato juice, sweetie."

"Want to drink some TOMATO juice! WOO-HOO!"

Why don't more people feel like that about tomato juice?