Don't You Think It's Weird

I'm not telling you where that song lyric came from. I'm too ashamed to say I know the lyrics to that song.

My child is weird. There. I've said it. And I have no hesitation in saying it, because I know she gets a lot of it from my husband and me, and I think I'm okay with my weirdness, but there are times that I worry a little bit. Here are some examples why.

Dietary Habits

Now, I know every four-year-old is a picky eater at some point. However, it's not just that The-Four-Year-Old is picky, her tastes are bizarre. Until recently she refused to eat anything made with ground beef, buts eats blue cheese by the fistful. Her favorites are Gorgonzola, Danish Blue, and Maytag. TFYO even asks for it in the store. "Mom, I think we're out of blue cheese, you need to buy some!" She also prefers to eat spinach salad (again, blue cheese dressing or Green Goddess dressing only, please), and likes carrots and celery, but if you serve her a cooked vegetable she freaks out. She eats fish and chicken (especially if it's breaded), but beef is pretty much off the table. Pork chops are out, but she rivals Elvis in her love for bacon (my apologies to all my vegetarian friends, the meat thing is almost over). The caveat to this is I can usually coax her into eating anything if I put hot sauce on it, or give her a kosher dill pickle to eat along side of whatever else has been served. Sometimes she just wants to eat the pickles out of the jar.


Musical Tastes

I was going to blame this one on my husband, but I suppose this is my fault too. Mostly his, though. My daughter is in love with Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. When my daughter was just shy of her first birthday, I bought my husband a Rat Pack DVD and CD set. When Dean showed up on the television screen, my baby hauled herself over there and plastered herself against him, howling with anger when I tried to pull her away. It's been that way every since. If we get in the car, "Moooooooom! I don't want to listen to your music, I wanna listen to MINE. I want DEAN." She also loves Glen Miller, Rosemary Clooney, and James Taylor. She also likes the Beatles better than the Rolling Stones. If she's given the chance to choose, though, it's almost always Dean Martin. The worst part for me is that she's taken to copying Dean's jokes from the DVD. I can just see her waltzing in to her first day of Pre-Kindergarten this fall. "I don't drink anymore, I freeze it and eat it like a popsicle." On the upside, her comic timing is impeccable.


Which brings me to this: Her Sense of Humour

TFYO knows if her father or I are mad about something, the easiest way out is to make us laugh. This would be okay, if she wasn't so damned good at making me laugh. One night we were having a tough time getting her to settle down to bed. She kept giggling, and I finally went in there and said "Just what the heck is so funny about bedtime?"

"Nothing," she said.

"Well, if nothing is funny, then why are you laughing?" (See, I'm playing the straight man here)

"Because nothing is funny. Nothing is just sooooo funny!"

"Alright, now, settle down. If nothing is funny, there shouldn't be so much laughing."

Then up pops a little hand from underneath the covers, and the hand says to me:

"I'm Nothing, and I'm hilaaaaaaaaarious!"

And just while I was trying to keep it together, her other hand popped up and proclaimed:

"And I'm Anything, and I'm funny, too!"

I had to leave the room. Her right foot has since been named Something, but it isn't quite as hilarious to Anything and Nothing who seem to delight in picking on her. And for some reason Anything sounds like James Mason. Or, at least, James Mason imitated by a little four-year-old girl.


The last thing weird about my kid:

Her Life, the Musical

TFYO loves to sing, and I mean SING. She's always been musical, she's been teaching herself simple songs on the piano since she was two years old, and we've always sang songs to her. But some days, I feel like I'm living in the Rabbit of Seville. Does she want to eat? Loud and clear and almost Wagnerian : "Yeeeees, Mommeeeeeee, I would like to eaaaaaaat! To eat, to eat, to eat would be sweeeeeeeeet!" The same goes for the playground, the bath and bedtime. Everything can be made into a song. There are occasions when this makes other children avoid her, but she doesn't seem to care. Generally, it doesn't bother me because her pitch is good, and she's rarely flat, and her sense of composition is pretty decent for a four-year-old. It's just when she wants us to join in that we have a problem. That, and the Twyla Tharp style dance numbers.


So, The-Four-Year-Old is weird, but I still think she's wonderful. I can give her a stack of books, and she'll read them to me while I try and get some housework done. Or she'll create little scenarios for her dolls to act out. Or she'll draw on every available piece of scrap paper until she's reduced to drawing on the backs of cereal boxes. And I love it. I love every minute of it.