‘You Know Better, Daddy’

The other day, I’m playing with my two-year-old daughter, Belle. She asks me to put her Barbie doll’s hair in a pony tail, so I do.

But then I try to spice things up by twisting it to the side. Belle frowns.

“Daddy, pony tails are straight,” she says. “You know better.”

Apparently, the danger in teaching kids the proper way to live is that they may eventually hold you to the same standards.

For example, when I burp, Belle now says: “Excuse you, Daddy!”

She’s also fond of saying, “Daddy, I need some milk. You know better.”

Most parents try to teach kids not to listen to rock music at volumes audible by people in Sri Lanka. We're no different with Belle. Recently, I was listening to The Three Tenors.

Anyone who listens to classical music knows it’s hard to set a good volume because most of the time you can’t hear it--then suddenly it blasts you at quadruple forte.

So the Three Tenors are singing vociferously and Belle says, “Daddy, that’s too loud for the squirrels and the birds. You know better.”

Growing Up Fast
But while she’s learning fast, sometimes things get jarbled. Like the other day, I took her into the bathroom to wash her hands. Afterwards, she says, “What’s that, Daddy?”

“That’s a urinal,” I say. “That’s yucky—no touch.”

“I sit in urinal,” she declares, moving toward it.

A few days later, she’s drawing with her godfather, Jason Kotecki--a cartoonist, author and public speaker. They're creating these great drawings, but Belle's baby brother, Johnny, keeps grabbing them, causing them to crinkle.

“Johnny!” she says indignantly. “No frinkle the paper! No frinkle!”

At dinner, we’re eating spaghetti and Belle says, “Mommy, more sca-betti, please.”

“You mean ‘more spaghetti?’” I ask.

“No. More scabetti, Daddy,” she says, nodding assuredly. “Yep. Scabetti.”

She pronounces other big words rather clearly. The other day I got her to use commingle in a sentence, i.e., “The scabetti sauce commingles with Daddy’s clothes.”

"That’s what I get for wearing a white shirt," I say, frinkling my nose.

Then Belle says: "You know better, Daddy."