first christmas

Aren't my daughties cute? I don't even know why Christmas is so special. But it seems that from mid-November through the first week of January, there's an extra special "Yule" feeling in the air. Is it Christ the Savior's birthday that gets us worked up? Saturnalia? The solstice? Mannheim Steamroller? All of the above?

I don't know if Anna figured any of it out. She mostly is happy to put anything in her mouth and say "ah ah". I am also not sure if Marta really "gets" Santa. I mean I think she is vaguely familiar with the idea, but does she really understand the full package -- Santa living at North Pole delivers elven-made toys to all the girls and boys via sleigh? Only Marta knows.

Today was Marta's fourth birthday. Four years of Daddydom. I like being a Dad. It's fun. We are watching Sound of Music though and I am not sure if I could be a father like Captain Von Trapp. two or maybe three is ok with me. Not seven. Right now I am content with my daughties. No reason to get biologically greedy. Now all I need to do is to get them to sing.

Anyway, speaking of Christmas, here's a shot of me from my first one. Like Anna, I don't remember the last Christmas of the 1970s ... at all. But I was there apparently, and here's the proof:

passports

Last week we finally filed for Anna's American passport in preparation for our coming travels to New York for the holidays. We had dragged our feet for awhile, mostly because, living in Tartu, everything seems so far away, and Tallinn? That's like a 2+ hour drive!

Things got worse two weeks ago when I smashed my driver's side mirror, rendering my ability to navigate the treacherous Tallinn-Tartu highway highly suspect. So we decided that we would have to take either the train or the bus to get up to Tallinn.

We also got Anna's passport photo taken. I was dreading this because Marta was such an active baby that we had a really hard time getting her to sit in one place for a passport photo shoot. At the photo shop they sat Anna on a chair and Epp held her back. Though she was kind of crooked, the photo came out well enough. We also noticed that Anna's left ear appeared gigantic in the photos. Epp checked to make sure that it was just the angle of the photo, and that our daughter really wasn't deformed.

I finally booked an interview with the consular officer -- Anna had to be present for the interview -- for Dec. 3. But the very same day Epp received an invitation to appear on the TV program Paar to discuss blogging. Because Epp is now marketing some new books and the invitation to be interviewed by Marko Reikop was hard to resist, we decided, ah, what the heck, let's go to Tallinn by bus. I called the embassy back and got an appointment for the next day.

The trip to Tallinn was nice on the bus. It was the first time, outside of a quick journey to Ahja in Põltsamaa, which is to the south of Tartu, that Anna had even been outside of the city of her birth. Anna watched the snow-covered trees outside the bus window with interest. This was her first journey into the magical outside world.

The US embassy has a glass guard house in front of it and when we got there we were told that one person at a time had to enter the house and go through the metal detector there. I was a bit concerned that they wanted Anna somehow to go through the detector alone, but no, Anna and Epp went together and I went separately.

Filling out paper work is funny. There are some little idiosyncrasies, especially the question of where was Epp born. Epp was born in Viljandi, Estonia, a city in the southern part of the country. But since her parents were registered in Tallinn as students, Epp was registered there too. So all Epp's documents list her birthplace as Tallinn, where she was not born.

Then there are lovely questions like, on what date did you first meet your spouse? All of you marrieds out there, try to answer that question. I know I met Epp in the first week of August, 2002 in Helsinki, Finland. But I have no idea whether it was the 5th or the 6th or maybe we didn't really meet until the 7th. Nobody really knows. It's a date lost to history.

Even better was the part where I had to list all the times I had been absent from the United States. Can you imagine? I've been to Canada three times in the past three years. So for those handful of dates, I was absent from the US! Then there was that trip to Mexico in 1988. I remember it was in February. I remember I ate fried bananas. I remember Ian had mononucleosis. I remember we all got Montezuma's Revenge. I remember a lot of things, except I don't remember exactly what dates we were there.

I didn't need a passport to enter Mexico then, and I doubt my folks needed one either. So how could I inform the embassy of which dates I was absent from the United States in 1988? Again, lost to history. I am sure the hotel we stayed in doesn't even have records of it. So I told the embassy I was there in February 1988. Good enough, right?

I was relieved when the consular officer told me that the forms had to be true to the best of my knowledge. Yes, sir, consular officer, sir! To the best of my knowledge those forms were accurate. That is the undeniable truth. The only question would be how reliable my knowledge is.

Anyway, the consular officer was pleasant on that snowy day in Tallinn and told us that Anna's passport photo was one of the better ones he had seen of a baby. For some odd reason, I'm proud of that.

Grenoble

Every now and then I get nostalgic for certain places, and one of my favorite places to get nostalgic for is Grenoble, France. I think the reason Grenoble is so special is because I had absolutely no plans to go there, nor had ever heard of it before taking the train from Lyon to Grenoble with Epp in early November 2002.

The background to this visit to southern France is a bit convoluted. Epp and I were in London and had Ryanair tickets to Italy booked for November 5. The only problem was that sometime in early November we forgot what the date was. So sometime on November 5 Epp approached me with a worried face and said she had bad news. We had missed our flight that morning.

We decided that the best option would be to go to the airport the next day at the same time and see if they would honor our tickets. We spent the night preparing for our trip. I remember there were a lot of pancakes made, and we packed the jar of peanut butter I bought at the LIDL supermarket near Thornton Heath, a jar that would keep me satiated many times in the weeks ahead.

At the airport though we learned that we would not be able to board the flight to Italy. So we weighed our options. We could wait one more day and see if we could get on the next flight -- this was my preference. But Epp started checking the counters to see where we could find a cheap flight. She approached me and said that there was a flight leaving to Lyon, France that would only cost us around $50 or $60. After some discussion, we decided France it would be.

When we got to Lyon, it was dark and raining. We walked to a few hostels and hotels trying to find a place to stay, but every where we went, all we heard was "compleat!" -- which means "full" in French. And nobody spoke English with us, so I had to learn some French from our guide book. We finally would one warm room in a nice hotel in Lyon with a skylight (!) and spent the evening there.

The next day we took a train into Grenoble, where we spent the next few days. Grenoble is situated in the foothills of the French alps. It's a mountain city with a well-known university. The mountains are literally so close that you can walk to the end of one street and the side of the mountain will begin.

Some memories of Grenoble: huge dogs sleeping on the floors of cafes. And I mean giant animals, beasts even. Late at night in our hotel in Grenoble we could hear a hell hound of a dog on one of the lower floors barking into the dark. It was a bit scary.

Cheese and wine: I know, how French. But the weekend markets had huge blocks of different kinds of cheeses, some so soft they would melt at the touch. We kept ours cool by leaving it outside the window at night. There was nothing like buying cheese at the market, some fresh loaves of bread and subsisting off that. The wine, too, was local and *cheap*. I think a bottle might cost something like $6. We had several.

But the thing that brings me back is the mountains and that clear, cool, Alpine air. We got it into our minds that we wanted to climb the mountain in town with the castle on top of it. That is the one with steps to the summit. Getting up to the castle though was no easy task. There were a great many steps. By the time we reached the pinnacle, huffing and puffing, nearly delirious with exhaustion, Epp was ready to pour us a glass of wine and open up the wine and cheese we had stored for our picnic at the top.

While up there I took a long look at the beautiful city below and watched a bird rise up from out of nowhere, hover about equal with the castle walls, and then dive back down to find a nice public park somewhere in Grenoble.

When I was in France, I was delighted when the people called me "Justin" the French way, "Zhoo-steen." It seemed closer to the way the name should be pronounced (the Greeks, where the name originated, say it like "Yustinos"). And when we climbed into the nearby hills we found a cemetery where there actually was a person interred named Justin.

This is so uncommon. My name is quite new in the US. I don't think I have ever met an old person named Justin. But this Justin had died many years before and had been born in the 19th century. I took a photo of Epp to commemorate the discovery of this very special cemetery where there were beautiful views, fresh air, and guys named Justin taking an eternal rest.

I love Grenoble. I want to go back.

The absent grandfather

According to my mom and several other relatives, Anna has inherited physical traits from my maternal grandfather's family -- the Abbatecolas. She went as far to compare Anna, just a few weeks old, to my great uncle Vinnie.

I only met my Uncle Vinnie one time that I can remember and that was about 20 years ago. But based on that experience, I have to say that I don't think the 75 year old Italian man I met back in 1988 and my young daughter look much alike.

The issue is compounded by the fact that I never knew my grandfather on that side, Frank. He died 12 years before I was born. In a way it's even odd to call him my grandfather. He is long gone. I imagine that if I took the parts of my uncles Frank, Joe, and Bob that don't remind me of grandma and rolled them all together, it would sort of be like my grandfather. But even as a child, I had no idea that certain things in my grandmother's house might have belonged to him -- his chair, his wallet, his old glasses, et cetera. He was out of the picture, some place faraway, in heaven perhaps?

And yet at the same time he wasn't. He touched all of us in different ways. For one, he had an artistic side. There are some really great sketches he did of my mother as a baby. He did them from photographs, but still, let's just say that I can't draw like that and perhaps never will be able to draw like that. It's kind of funny that all of his children are artistic too, and grandchildren even. Most of them gravitated to the visual arts. There is certainly some kind of artistic residue in the blood. Other forces may have been at play, but natural talent is hard to synthesize.

For me, the weird things about this absent grandfather were quite personal. That is because in some odd ways I physically resembled this person in the photographs. Marta and I used to pass a photo of him in the dining room in my parents' house and Marta would often point at him and say, "Look, Issi, that's you!"

Other strange links would pop up from time to time. I liked to sleep with my knees up sometimes when I was younger. One time I was discussing this and my Aunt Mary chimed in and said that "Daddy used to do that." Mary, who was 12 when he died, usually refers to him as "Daddy" while Mom, then aged 19, calls him "my father."

More recently I was putting the heat of a freshly poured cup of coffee up against my closed eye lids one morning at my parents' house. I do this because when I wake up, my eyes are often full of crap you just can't get out by washing your face. The heat helps to melt the goop. It also feels pretty good. "Do that again," my Mom said suddenly. "Now ask me why I told you to do that", she continued. "Why?" I asked. "Because," she said, "my father used to do that every morning at the breakfast table."

One final thing I have picked up from the absent grandfather is, believe it or not, how to cut my pancakes. When I was boy I shared a few breakfasts with my Uncle Bob -- maybe he was still living at grandma's house then, I don't remember. Anyway, Uncle Bob used to cut his pancakes into a neat grid before eating them. Some people prefer to cut and eat, piece by piece. So I learned to eat pancakes from Uncle Bob.

One time I did this in front of grandma, and she stopped suddenly. "You know," she said. "You cut your pancakes just like your grandfather." I guess Uncle Bob learned this trick at the breakfast table too!

Uncle Ken

Last month, my great uncle Ken Miller passed away. He was 80 years old. 80 seems to be the end of the line for a lot of guys with chronic diseases. My grandfather died about eight months shy of his 80th birthday, for example. Death. It happens.

The day Ken died, I was out at Aura Keskus with Marta swimming. When I came home, Epp told me that Ken had passed away. I went into the other room and for whatever reason I was consumed with grief. I actually cried for a bit -- the kind of uncontrollable sobs that only children are supposed to have. It came as a total shock to me that I could actually be crying.

When Marta cries over little things I sometimes lose my patience and say, "What's your problem." She cries when we, for example, comb her hair. This time, though, it was her turn to get in my face. "Issi, what's your problem?" she said innocently as I cried.

"Uncle Ken died," I said. "He was a cool guy."

Cool guy he may have been but the last time I actually saw him was in 1993 at another funeral, the funeral for Uncle Joe, Ken's older brother. I had a pretty good relationship with Father Joe, who was a Catholic priest. When Joe died, my mother and brother were both very upset. I saw both of them cry. But I couldn't muster any tears. I was only 14 and sort of confused by the whole thing. We went to visit Joe a few days before he passed on. Standing in the hospital room in Washington he looked at me.

"You're unusually quiet," he said. I told him I was just tired. But actually I lied. I was unusually quiet because I knew that he wasn't going to last much longer and we had all come to say goodbye, yet we couldn't actually say goodbye. We had to make small talk.

When Father Joe died he had two memorial services -- one at his old parish in Washington, DC, another one in Northport for relatives, and then an internment at the family plot in Calvary Cemetery which is in Queens. At the hotel before the ceremony in Washington, Uncle Ken pulled me aside and said something to the affect of, "hey, you're pretty tall? do you play basketball?"

I am not sure where Ken, Joe -- well the Miller family -- grew up, either in Queens or Brooklyn or both, but they all had the same manner of speech. The only way I could describe it is it was sort of a muted version of Archie Bunker's "working class Queens" accent from the show All in the Family. I don't have a photo of Ken lying around so I had to use one of Carroll O'Connor, as seen above. No disrespect intended.

So Ken went on to discuss how he could be my manager if I were ever to play professional basketball. This was all going on while we were waiting, I think, to go see Father Joe for the first time, post-mortem. For a 14 year-old who had only ever been to one wake before, seeing someone I knew well in the flesh laid out in a church was a bit of a scary experience. I can only think that Ken perhaps sensed my anxiety and was trying to loosen me up.

Ken was member of a large family. There were two older brothers -- Frank and John. Then there was Joe, Ann (grandma), Fred, Ken, and then Bob. It happened this way, that Grandma's father -- Fred Miller -- was actually born in Ontario as 'Alphonse Menagh' in 1886. I don't know if his middle name was Frederick, but his mother -- Annabelle Jaynes, had a brother named Frederick Jaynes -- so it was a family name.

Sometime in the 1890s the family moved to Montreal. Fred's father, Frank Menagh, changed the family name to Miller. Montreal at that time was French-speaking (still mostly is) and the family legend is that he did it to make his business sound more mainstream. Menagh is a northern Irish corruption of the Scottish 'MacNaughton' -- according to a distant relative I met on the Internet. Many northern Irish have lowland Scottish roots.

Anyway, Fred Miller grew up and married Lucy Carroll, also from an Irish family from New York City. Lucy was the mother of Frank and John. Sadly, she died in 1920. Fred, with two young sons, then married Lucy's younger, single sister Genevieve. Genevieve was the mother of this second crop of Miller children. So Grandma and Ken were whole siblings, but Grandma and Uncle John were half-sibling, half-cousin -- something outrageous like that.

Father Joe's funeral(s) were sort of a showcase for this side of the family I didn't know. There was Uncle Bob, who I saw share a smoke with my mother's brother Joe -- and as I watched them smoke, I could see that they shared some kind of family connection. They look totally different but for that moment, the family connection was apparent.

Then there was Uncle John. He was referred to in the family as 'Popeye' because he also spoke with the Irish working class accent and was a bit rough around the edges. I knew him pretty well too because we used to visit his house in Northport and use -- for lack of a better expression -- his pool.

The contrast between Father Joe and Uncle John was pretty stark. Father Joe had a wall of interesting books in his room at Grandma's house. Books about very interesting topics. I remember one was called "Blitzkrieg" and it was about World War II. He was sort of an old-school character. My brother's last name is Ericksen, and I remember he telling me he'd give me $5 if I could tell him which Scandinavian countries ended patronymic surnames with '-sen' and which ones with '-son'. (Denmark and Norway end names with '-sen', Sweden and Iceland with '-son' --- a fact I learned later in life and instantly thought of Father Joe).

Uncle John would say something more to the tune of, "Whaddya mean I can't cuss? All the cuss words are rite there in the Bible!" I remember I asked him about his grandfather once -- what was he like, etc. Just making small talk. "My grandfather, he proceeded, was a mean old man who lived in Canada ..." And that's where he ended his story. As a New York Irish friend of mine would say, he was "a real pisser."

Of all the Miller children, Fred was the first one to go. He died when he was only about 20-21 after an illness. Frank -- who I never met -- died in 1980. Father Joe died in 1993, and then in a true act of weirdness, John and Bob died within two weeks of each other in 1998. I was at school then, I didn't go to the funerals.

That left Grandma and Ken. And when I think of why I cried when I heard that Ken died, I think it was because I really felt for my grandma and how she lost her last brother. I also knew, as an adult, that life is like a conveyor belt, and when one generation is lost, the next one starts to go. I thought about how lonely it must be to be the last one left from a family that used to be so big. I also thought about how lonely it must be to die and how the world just keeps moving on without you -- that there is never any real peace, and never any real "right time" to go. Like I said: Death. It happens. It's a depressing thought, maybe the one that finally burst the damn and let the tears out.

But, anyway, enough for sad stories. Uncle Ken was a cool guy. May he rest in peace.

Different babies

Today we visited our friends Ott and Tiina who welcomed towards the end of October a new member to their family, a baby boy named ... well, he doesn't quite have a name yet.

He is being called varyingly "poiss" (boy) or "vend" (brother) -- he has an older sister named Liisa. According to Ott, they have five names picked out for the little loaf of baby ... Jaagup, Kaarel, Mihkel, Mattias, and Gustav. They can't decide which one they like most.

I somewhat selfishly told Ott that I favored Gustav. Why? Because I already know babies named Mattias and Jaagup and you can't swing a grocery bag around Kaubamaja, the department store in Tartu, without hitting someone named Mihkel. But Gustav? It's distinct. I'll never have any trouble remembering his name.

But it's up to them to wait until one strikes them. There's another funny thing though. Baby ? doesn't look anything like Anna. I always thought babies all sort of looked the same -- round heads, tuffs of hair, chubby cheeks, button nose ... that kind of thing.

But "Question Mark" (what I have decided to call him in homage to the 1960s garage band) doesn't look anything like Anna. He has tufts of dark brown hair. He is lacking in cheeks, he's got wider cheek bones. In short, he's a totally different baby.

Scooty McDooty: The next generation

When I was a kid, we were all given nicknames which were used by our adoring Uncle Joe who insisted on being called just "Joe" because there was another Uncle Joe and the term Uncle sounded a bit too old for someone that was in some cases less than 20 years older than us.

Brother Ian was called "Weebles" after a toy. Steven was called "Ernest" after his favorite Sesame Street character. And I was called "Scooty McDooty" because I had a habit of filling up a diaper as soon as a fresh one was applied.

I am glad to announce that Anna has inherited this talent from me. As soon as I change her, wash her butt, freshen her up, and put on another diaper, she is ready to fill it up with an additional round of never-ending poop. It's really amazing that such a small person could have so much poop in them, especially a small person that subsists only on breast milk.

But our Anna is certainly talented in this regard and also worthy of the Scooty McDooty nickname.

Marta as Pippi

For Halloween we had to assemble a costume quickly that would be favorable to our small yet very sensitive daughter. After some debate we decided against "princess" (thank god) and decided to go with Pippi Longstocking, known to Swedes as Pippi Laangstrump and to Estonians as Pippi Pikksukk.

There were some technical difficulties. For one the wig was a bit too short. Also we had to improvise with clothing. We decided to recycle Marta's pirate costume -- which Uncle Ian once said looks like a waitresses uniform from the restaurant chain TGI Fridays -- and rationalized its use by reminding ourselves that Pippi has in the past visited the South Seas and her father is allegedly a pirate. Then we added freckles and Marta's kitty boots. The results can be seen below.


What do you think?

Dog is thirsty, Dog wants juice

This photo was taken several weeks ago, but Marta's dog behavior has not abated. Instead it seems to be entering a continuing arc where Marta late at night will either pretend she's a cat or a dog.

Marta takes this very seriously. She demands things as a dog. She will yell at me "Dog is thirsty! Dog wants juice!" or "Dog is hungry! Bring Dog more pretzels!" all while lounging and watching BabyTV. I can be anywhere in the house when she yells these things. I could be upstairs making a phone call. I will sooner or later hear that Dog wants pretzels.

It's a bit spooky to have a child so into character and brings to mind spooky images from certain spooky 1970s horror films, specifically the one to your right.

But had the spirits of deceased pets entered into my daughter's body? Or is something more sinister at work? One day when I went to pick Marta up from school I saw that she and the other girls, Anna, Margaret, and Eva-Liisa, were all rolling around on the floor acting like dogs.

I began to wonder if Marta had passed on the dog act to them, or if one of them had given the dog mentality to Marta. No matter, they were all acting crazy, which I guess is comforting in its own way. But Marta is still acting like a dog. Maybe they've already passed through that phase.

Last night I told Dog that I was sad and I wanted my Marta back. I did this about three or four times until Dog decided to hug me and tell me that she was Marta again.

Daddy's Little Deadhead

We had to travel to Põlvamaa on Saturday evening to party down with some of Epp's hippie friends. Why are they hippies per se? Because if you replaced the cast of Scooby Doo with Taavi, Sirts, Kati, et al., it probably wouldn't look that different.

Before we embarked on our trip I decided to make a last minute mix tape for the car ride. First I put a few songs from Gilberto Gil at the front of the tape. These are exciting Brazilian pop songs from 1968 -- sort of like samba meets rock with full orchestra backing by Rogerio Duprat. But Anna did not like these.

So I searched for something more mellow, the most mellow thing I could find. I decided that Workingman's Dead by the Grateful Dead would be the optimal solution. And it was. Anna particularly liked "New Speedway Boogie". You should really open up the link to get a look at Anna's "people" there. I think the video is from about 1970. The comments section say its from the Festival Express tour in 1970.

Anna road the steady bluesy lines from Jerry Garcia's guitar almost all the way through the song, and looked displease when I had to turn off "Cumberland Blues" because Marta was whining for more girl dance music that she could "dance" to -- in reality jump around and shake her head back and forth.

Unknown to all but me, Marta is a huge Gal Costa fan. Gal Costa is a Brazilian singer who started out in the Tropicalia movement (see photo, right) but graduated to doing ballads and dance music by the late 1970s.

I only like the early stuff, but Marta I am sure would be willing to sit through all of Gal's catalog, including her most cheesy Brazilian disco tunes. You can see an early concert of Gal here.

Well, because Marta is a disco queen, we'll have to listen to Jerry with Anna in private next time around.

Musical Youth

So I want to turn this blog into something more than just recounting our lives for the folks back home. It's going to be about my thoughts and the kids and everything in between. My 'personal' blog, outside of politics and Europe and all that.

I have been trying to turn my children on to music. I do this when I have to work and am bored and the laptop is on. I go to YouTube, search for some of my favorite videos, and play them for Anna and Marta.

The only problem is that 20th century pop and rock music is really complicated and often too scary for little kids. I forget that their minds are so soft and malleable. So when I put on a video of Peter Tosh (above right) singing "Stepping Razor" in 1979, I forgot that to most people today, Peter Tosh looks absolutely crazy.

First of all, he's got dreadlocks. Then there's the big joint hanging out of his mouth. He's dancing crazy on stage backed by a whole band of dangerous looking dudes singing "I am like a stepping razor, better watch my side, I am dangerous, I'm dangerous."

So Tosh isn't family friendly. But who could be more family friendly and still enjoyable. You know? Perfect for the Disney channel on a Sunday morning? Bob Marley, Tosh's old band mate. So I put on "Kinky Reggae", and again it was just too complicated for their young minds to digest. I really think Anna was going to just pass out or something. Marley may have fathered 13 kids, but his music was still a bit too heavy for my daughties.

Finally, I decided that I needed something safe and normal. Something anybody would put on at a party. The kind of stuff I heard as a kid. And I grew up to be perfectly normal, right? (sound of crickets chirping). I decided to reach for The Rolling Stones singing "Harlem Shuffle" from 1985, definitely a song I heard when I was a kid, a song I was not afraid of.

Yet when Mick Jagger started singing "Move it to the right, yeah, yeah" I realized that I didn't want to let my offspring anywhere near Sir Mick and his gyrating hips, let alone his 80s mullet.
Am I just really conservative, or are Marley, Tosh, and Jagger just not children's entertainment material.

I'll tell you something interesting. Marta cannot watch Spongebob Squarepants. I love that show. It's filled with little hyperactive inside jokes. But she prefers Baby TV. It's just happy music and stories about lambs and butterflies and good, wholesome things of that nature. And definitely no Peter Tosh, and certainly no Sir Mick.

I am personally getting a little sick of Baby TV and Barbie. I am starting to really loathe Barbie. Marta keeps dressing up and coming up to me and saying, "Look, I am a beautiful princess." And I tell her she is always beautiful, that she doesn't need to dress up. But she doesn't get it. She's being brainwashed by idiotic Barbie.
Oh well. Better Barbie than Bratz. Right? Barbie is superficial but well-meaning. Bratz are just 'ho-models'.

I try to encourage better programming like Charlie and Lola or Fraggle Rock. But all else pales to Barbie. It's like crack for little girls. Shame on you Barbie. Shame. On. You.

Moved ...

I have decided to combine my Marta and Anna blogs at the following address:


http://martaplusanna.blogspot.com/

Sistahs

So I have decided that two individual blogs about our two daughters Marta and Anna have not been working. It's just too counterintuitive to divide up fatherhood by child.

I recently was asked for the purposes of an article some questions about our second child Anna who was born in July. What have I learned since her birth?

One answer was that I no longer fear that my heart is only big enough for one child. I know that this is not true. Anna has been in my heart since the moment she looked at me and her lower lip trembled with excitement.

The other answer was that I am happier. I am very happy to wake up every morning to the sounds of baby snorts and farts. I am very happy to have a little bald clown in front of me that wants to see me, that wants me to hold her, that wants me to be near to her.

Another question I get is how has Marta been handling Anna's coming. I would say that both of them like each other. Anna likes to watch Marta do things, even if it is just sitting on the couch, watching TV, and eating something way past her bedtime. Marta likes to see Anna and give her bone crunching hugs. She has never expressed any anger towards Anna. I hope it stays that way.

I recently read a book by Stephen King called Lisey's Story. It's a King novel and deals with some dark territory but it also deals with the relationships between five or so sisters from one family and how they all interact. King writes excellently from a woman's perspective. It's really amazing. I was comforted to know that he just isn't that talented and that his wife comes from one of these families where there are only girls.

Growing up I knew these families too. Sometimes there was only one boy who either grew up to be a womanizer or to be gay. The line was drawn in the sand. But often there were just girls. I speculated that the reason there was a fourth or fifth daughter was because somebody was attempting to create something with a bit more testosterone.

It seems amazing that biology is supposed to give you a 50-50 chance. But my Dad was one of four boys. However, his father came from a family of four boys and four girls, the first three of whom were males. So I guess the ratio is to be found in quantity. So if you are lucky enough to sire 100 children, its likely that around 50 of them will be boys. Take note of that, my Saudi Arabian readers.

But beyond pure biology and affinity for Barbie, sisters allegedly have psychic powers. They can read each other's minds. They are on the same cycle, if you will. I can read my brother's mind sometimes, but usually the only images that appear in my head are those of food or the Yankees game.

But do sisters really get that well along and read each other's minds? I'd say yes and no. Sisters also have a tendency to annoy one another (as is evidenced in King's book). They can also fall out over seemingly insignificant things -- the accidental use of certain words, failing to call at a certain time, making a certain face in response to a statement. One day they are best friends, the next day they are mortal enemies.

Oh well, better not read that much into it. Right now our little sisters are still little girls.

How do you solve a problem like Marta Maria?

I have recently reached an impossible barrier in my life as a parent. Disciplining my child. All children are bad. Some are worse than others. Some are quiet as church mice and then grow up to be homeless people or prostitutes. Others are wicked and selfish and mature into successful politicians or clergymen. There is no way to gauge what straw of life your child has drawn -- all you can do is try to help them along the way.

Marta is a cute child. She is talented, entertaining, and energetic. And she is also moody, cross, whiny, and nearly impossible to discipline. If she wants bread, she gets bread. If she wants another lollipop she will get another lollipop. If she wants more Barbie Island Princess, she'll watch more Barbie Island Princess.

Are her parents pushovers? Maybe. The truth is we have a hard time making up our own minds on what to eat for dinner and things of that nature. Perhaps it is this perceived softness that has allowed this little Mussolini to blossom in our ranks. But now that it has occurred, how do you deal with someone who will fight you to the death over a lollipop?

There are three methods of dealing with Marta Maria. Psychological, Administrative, and Physical.

Psychological is the the most preferred method of parents. This is where you guarantee certain things in return for others, ie. you can watch Barbie Island Princess if you brush your teeth. You can have ice cream, if you take a bath. You can do X, in return for Y. The problem here is that the tired parental mind is not always as sharp as it must be to deal with the cunning three-year-old swindler. It's hard to constantly make good deals and eventually the kid gets what they want without doing the returned service. They wear you down. You lose in the end.

Administrative is the method where one action deserves a penalty. If you are loud, rude, pushy, hit your parent, you go and stand in the corner. If you act out, you don't get certain rewards, like Barbie Island Princess. In the administrative method, lines are drawn. If you hit your daddy when he doesn't give you a lollipop, certain punishments are handed down, like standing in the corner.

The problem is that sometimes this does not do the trick. No matter how many times you say "No, don't do that", the child does not cease and desist. This is when Physical methods are brought into your arsenal. For example, the other night Marta continued to bite my butt. She kept coming up from behind me and biting me. I told her no in as many ways possible. This was dangerous because I was cooking. I am a big guy and do not want to lose my balance. Finally I was forced to put down what I was doing, and spank her with three hard whacks on the rear-end. Marta started to cry, but at least she wasn't biting my butt anymore.

In the end a combination of all these methods doesn't seem to work. My child is still disobedient, and I don't mind it all too much. I mean she is a child, and *all* kids I grew up around acted like that once in awhile. I too had my temper tantrums and I am sure Epp did as well. Now that we are adults we are faraway from this childhood land, where denial of ice cream could be a factor in a decision for you to trash your room in protest.

It's interest seeing it all now from the other side.

Daughterdom

When the coin was being flipped by God over whether nor not we'd have another girl or a boy, I was hoping/wishing/praying for a girl. I told my friends it's because I have so many girl clothes. This is true. We do have a lot of girl clothes. But I also have to say that the little boys I encounter at Marta's school are totally psycho.

I went to pick her up one day and they were throwing themselves off the top of a staircase like they were in Mission: Impossible or something. I mean we are talking about the missing link between man and ape here: little boy. This is funny because I did all that crazy shit too. As a youth my friends and I would gladly climb inside an oil drum and roll down hills.

But now I have mellowed and my testosterone levels have gone down and -- as annoying as Barbie is -- I'd rather have Barbie on the TV than live with miniature A-Team down the hall plotting my downfall.

Yet every person I meet seems right to quip that the next child will be a masculine child. My grandmother tells me so. The old lady at the post office jokes so. The joke seems to be coming on me right? One out of three could turn out to have a pee-pee.

Girls seem so easy. I could have fourteen daughters. Marta, Anna, Maria, Lucia, Miina, Nina, Sabrina, Drusilla, Priscilla, Ursula, Tiina, Louisa, Lea, Mia -- see how easy that was? But boys? We never were even to find one measly boy name we liked. Not one.

You see, I wanted to name the little guy after men I admired, like Marcello Mastroianni or Caetano Veloso. I could handle a small, very expressive Marcello telling me that he was 'done' and needed his rear-end wiped. But such a designation would create some major eye-rolling across families, not to mention my wife would never call her little bundle of blue-eyed joy 'Caetano'.

She wanted Peeter. But my folks jumped on this one because, well, they didn't like it. They promised to mix dog food in my bolognese for the rest of my life should I move forward with Peeter. And I didn't like it either. In Estonia, Peeter is this old guy down at the pub who will curse, but only sparingly. In America, Peter is one of the boys on the Brady Bunch.

That's actually one of the major drawbacks of naming a future American: pop culture inferences.

For example:

George: Jefferson

Thomas: the Tank Engine

Justin: Timberlake

Ben: a rat.

Dick: Tricky

Fred: Krueger: Flinstone: Drop Dead ____

I decided that I just don't care anymore. But I know people like to write about these things. And nobody has written any comments on this blog for along time. Anyway, we decided to name the imaginary boy Federico, after my favorite film director. Or rather Fred-Eerik, because it looks so positively silly, yet somehow captures the stupidity he could inherit from me should he choose to come to this world. They are also family names, but I digress, this is a blog to amuse you, not me.

In the meantime, as people continue to make jokes about little Fred-Eerik, I will continue to nestle in my cozy home with my two nuzzle bears Marta and Anna and be happy as hell to be a daddy in daughterdom, where the big fight is over what color dress Marta will be wearing to school tomorrow morning.

The girls in my second grade class were right all along. Girls really do rule.

Lollipops

Mimi and Papa are visiting here in Tartu this week. Mimi likes to tell Marta sometimes that if she eats eggs her hair will be nice and shiny.

Mimi brought with her two bags of organic lollipops, and Marta just may have eaten 10 today.

I tried to tell her, as she sucked down #10 in the bathtub, that if she kept eating them, her teeth would rot out (I have been reduced to using old oneliners from my upbringing to get things done -- call it parental autopilot).

"But Issi," said Marta. "The lollipops make my hair shiny." And she pulled the saliva-wet lolli from her mouth to show off just how shiny her lollipop was.

Hoboken Days

What's the first thing you remember? Who can really tell? But it seems like if you boil down all childhood memories, your first memories that stay with you are of life when you are about three years old.

This reality recently reared its head when chatting with Marta about our life in America. Marta kept referring to "Danny's House" [Danny, about 9 mo. older than Marta, lived downstairs from us in Belle Harbor, Queens, for a year]. She also told me that when she lived at "Danny's House" she was still a baby, but obviously not anymore -- no, she's a "big girl" these days.

When we moved to Belle Harbor in early 2006, Marta had just turned 2. In a lot of ways -- think potty training -- she really was still a baby. But it sort of never occurred to me that Marta would 'lose' her memories of Hoboken, New Jersey, where we lived for most of 2005. Hoboken was a very intense living experience. Everything -- the great food, the view of the city lights, the [extremely drunken] St. Patrick's Day Parade, and especially the traffic -- was intense. It's hard to imagine how Marta could just not recall all the days she saw Richie at the laundromat or Chung at the organic food store. But it's just not there at the tip of her tongue anymore.

It is cool, though, that she remembers Danny's House. Because we lived right next to the ocean and it is nice to think that Marta's first memories will be of the Atlantic Ocean and the sand. Those are sort of my first memories too.

First memories are kind of not that interesting though, when you think of it. I mean, what do I remember from the beach? Getting sand stuck in my teeth (ugh), the smell of low tide, and who could forget those primordial beasts the Horseshoe Crabs -- things that no toddler would ever want to step on. See I am boring you already.

One thing I am happy I do remember is my great grandmother. She had a room in my grandma's house and everything about my memories of her seem ancient. To my fragile young mind she seems like a ghost -- blue-eyed, pale, gray, dressed in white. Interestingly she died at the end of 1982, right after my third birthday. It seems that my brain was just old enough to register her existence before she passed on.

When your daughter is a girl ...

Last night we went to Elo's place where Marta and Simona (her cousin) were playing. I started leafing through Simona's collection of Barbie magazines, and discovered that the text was simple enough that it could be helpful in learning some more Estonian.

Simona decided to give them to me 'on the condition that I give them back tomorrow and not let Marta touch them' and so I was quite happy to learn the word for cool (mugav), clothing (rõivad), sparkling (sädaleva), silvery (hõbedane), and ribbon (pael).

This morning though Marta saw that I had the secret Barbie stash and she flipped out. Her whole body quivvered with excitement. "Want to see them!" she cried. I remembered my promise to Simona, but decided to allow Marta to read one upstairs while I put her clothing on.

After I put on a fairly normal shirt -- of fish from Captiva Island -- I searched through unisex shorts. But Marta demanded something else to cover her bottom. "I want a skirt," she said. "A pink skirt."

Meanwhile she was trying to read the Barbie magazine, which is comprised of fun games, like picking out clothing for Barbie and Ken to wear, and quasi-animated pictorials of Barbie and Ken shopping together. I hate to break this to you out there, but Ken is gay. And by gay, I mean homosexual.

No straight man with blonde hair and blue eyes wears an orange scarf and a fire engine red leather jacket. If he was Italian-looking he probably could be straight. But Ken looks like he's from the Swiss alps. Therefore Ken = gay. Not like there's anything wrong with that. But I think Ken just pretends to be Barbie's boyfriend so they can go shopping together.

Anyway, this is just a typical day in the life of a father of girl. I have decided to start an Anna blog to let you know how all is developing with her. Stay tuned.

The Magic of Harry Potter

It's been a tradition of Epp and mine to see each new film in the Harry Potter series, one that, when looking back, tells a story about our lives and how they have progressed.

The first Potter film I saw was actually in Copenhagen, Denmark in November 2001. This was an especially sweet Potter for those were cold and lonely days and the opportunity to disappear into the magic of Hogwarts was appealing.

By the following November, I was seated in a movie theater in Cork, Ireland, next to Epp and surrounded by misbehaving Irish kids. This may have been the day I asked Epp to marry me, I am not sure, we were only in Cork for two days. But that experience set the precedent of seeing Potter together, each time in a different place.

We saw the next Harry Potter film in June 2004 in New York on our wedding anniversary. The theater was far from crowded, but it felt good to get away into British boarding school land where intrigue lies around every corner. I had a friend who was teaching in England at that time, and I thought that perhaps he was living that kind of life.

Finally, we saw the last Harry Potter flick in Weehawken, New Jersey (of all places) on my 26th birthday in 2005. Being a November baby kind of blows because your birthday always coincides with crappy autumn weather. So again, it was nice be whisked away to Potterland.

Finally, on Friday we saw the latest Harry Potter movie. We bought tickets to see it here in Tartu but the ones we had were too close to the screen to see it so we went and sat on the steps in the back. Epp had been in the early stages of labor since morning and we made it all the way through the film thinking that Epp was going to deliver on July 21 -- not on July 20, her 33rd birthday.

Instead, about an hour (maybe less) after leaving the theater, we were on our way to the hospital. And at 10.09 pm, our daughter Anna was born. She is special. I like to just watch her sleep. And here is a photo of the newest member of our family.

Pärnumaa

Last weekend we ventured out to Pärnumaa, which is a county in the southwestern corner of Estonia on the Baltic Sea. Part of Epp's family comes from Pärnumaa and her mother was born in Pärnu, which is known as the "summer capital of Estonia" in guidebooks, although few people I have ever met have used the term.

To get to Pärnumaa, and specifically to a small village called Varbla where a good 25 percent of all Epp's relatives are from, we drove first to Suure-Jaani and then straight across to the north of the city of Pärnu, then followed the coast north through Tõstamaa and into Varbla, where we met with Epp's great aunt at the cemetery where Epp's great grandparents are buried.


The cemetery was fascinating. They always are. Like most Estonian cemeteries, this one was in the woods. It was basically a grove in the forest where stones and metal and wooden crosses jutted out of the Earth. I took a lot of photos of Marta in this environment because it was so creepy. I thought that Marta and the cemetery together had a sort of a eerie Victorian flavor.



After we visited the cemetery we went to have lunch at the house where Epp's great grandparents used to live and where her grandmother lived when she was a little girl. Epp's great grandfather built the house sometime in the 1920s. Clockwise from left is Epp's cousin Jaanus, her great aunt Salme, Salme's cousin whose name is also Salme, the back of Simona's head, and Epp. Anna is in there somewhere too, if you can imagine.



We finished our trip to Varbla by heading out to the coast to take a look at the water. It's so nice that it's only June and we have several more months of this kind of stuff. Summer in Estonia is magical. People act differently, they are nicer and they look at you on the street. Who wouldn't feel happy looking out on views like this?



On the way back from Varbla, we stopped in Liu to see an acquaintance of Epp's who has horses and two very large St. Bernard dogs. Some Estonian towns have "normal" names like Haapsalu and Viljandi. But others have quasi-Chinese names like Liu, Lao, and Mäo. In fact, Liu and Lao are right next to each other. Anyway, Simona got to ride the horse, but Marta was too small (she was very sad when she figured this out). Still, she was allowed to mount the horse for a quick photo-op, and the horse took a few steps forward so, arguably, she rode it as well.



The drive back from Pärnu to Tartu took about three hours. People think Estonia is a small country but it's actually quite roomy when you get inside of here. As we passed near Võrtsjärv I snapped this picture out the car window. Everyone else in the car was napping, so it was just me and the sunset -- this photo was taken maybe after 10 pm -- to keep me company.

Pippi

The first words Marta said to me today were "go away". I walked into the bedroom to announce that I was making eggs for breakfast and I was greeted with "go away". Somehow I don't mind it too much though. I just sort of accept that my daughter can be a little nasty and pay it no mind. But inside it kind of sucks.

We walked through town because there is a cycling rally today and most of the streets are closed off. Marta has really been into pirates recently. She's been talking about them. I think what happened is that the new Pirates of the Caribbean film came out and the little ones in pre-school are jabbering on about Captain Jack Sparrow.

I wouldn't dare take her though. Too scary. Ditto for Harry Potter. I am not as enthusiastic as some of the parents of the 90s with my filtering of popular culture (remember the v chip?) but I still like to keep my kid away from scary things. That is ultimately done out of benefit for me so that she doesn't get nightmares and wake me up in the middle of the night. See -- good parenting is born out of self-interest.

But when Marta wanted to buy a red Pippi Longstocking wig and a Pippi DVD at the store today, I couldn't really say no. I think it's good to encourage her enjoyment of 1970s Swedish children's television and a heroine that doesn't dress in sleazy costumes (like so many things designed for little girls) and doesn't have sinister undertones, like Harry Potter.

So Marta today is Pippi and, wouldn't you know, the Pippi movie is about her adventures on the south seas with pirates! Perfect. As a sidenote, the woman who illustrated a lot of Astrid Lindgren's books, but not Pippi. was born right here in Tartu.

You can read the interview with Ilon Wikland, who was born here 77 years ago and fled to Sweden at the age of 14 in 1944, here. She is also the author of her own book, interestingly called "Sammali, Epp, and Me."

Back from the UK

I left last Monday for a business trip to the UK. I first went to Edinburgh for two days, then took a train down to Oxford for another two days. I have decided that, just going to the UK, that we are going to have to go back perhaps two or three times to "do it all".

I have large ambitions for a future Petrone family vacation. For one, we are going to go to the Outer Hebrides in the Scottish highlands during the future Petrone family vacation, especially the Isle of Lewis where something like 75 percent of the people speak Gaelic.

Also, we are going back to Oxford -- where I just was -- and doing our research before we go so we can take in all the history, most of it I just happened to walk by with my knapsack.

Other places to see include Cornwall and Northumbria and then there's Wales. I can just imagine Epp and I and our two daughters with their heads poking out of the windows of the car as we make our way through the English countryside munching on sandwiches of cheddar and other good English stuff on our way to Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk to visit its interesting sugar beet factory. Can you just see it? With me driving on the opposite side of the road? Good thing I have got years to practice (and save) for that one.

A special kid

In case you didn't know, my daughter is special. No, not 'special' in that way. Instead special in a myriad of other ways.

Last week at kindergarten she wore a yellow dress. I took her into the kindergarten room, and one boy yelled her name out: "Marta Petrone"!!! Then Marta walked in proudly and showed off her yellow skirt as the teachers went "ooh" and "ahh" She loved the attention.

Today, she managed to steal some of my Halls medicine candies. I went into her room and there were two sticky candies stuck to her table. "Do you want something to eat?" she asked. I decided to take the least slimy Halls medicine candy and eat it quickly. Later she tried to push another one on me, but I declined. Just a bit too gross for me, sorry.

This morning I became aware of something grabbing my feet. This goes way back, so long ago that Alexander Haig was secretary of state. The biting my feet thing is legendary. There was some sort of poltergeist in my childhood home long ago. But this time the little monster biting my feet was named Marta. She was giggling each time her little paws grabbed my foot and I screeched and recoiled in horror.

The little lady. Such a special kid.

Marta's long trip

Our long trip to the US began at 4 am on Monday morning in Tartu. We awoke, gathered our things, and took a taxi to the bus station. It was dark and cold, and Epp cradled Marta in her arms to keep her warm as we waited for the bus. And then it came. We boarded the bus and Marta and I drove off, waving goodbye to emme as we headed towards Tallinn.

When we got to Tallinn's airport I managed to pull Marta off the bus and grab our suitcase and make it inside. I opened my laptop and began to work, but Marta opened her pink princess suitcase and began to make a mess. Those e-mails I sent really paid off though. Because of them alone I was able to put together the week's issue -- due the next day.

On the plane Marta made friends with a nice Estonian lady that paid attention to her. This made me feel good. I didn't know how Marta was going to act without an 'emme' nearby, especially taking off in a plane, and it was nice that there was a 'surrogate' emme to pass the time as Marta and I flew to Helsinki.

The Helsinki airport is one of the main hubs of my existence. I have been there more times than I know. It is my Penn Station of Europe outside of Estonia. Marta was NOT tired and she wanted to play. There was a children's playroom that we were in, but later it was commandeered by two Estonian boys, Kaspar and Markus (I think) and Marta was scared to go in there. Hell, I didn't want to intrude on Kaspar and Markus. There was also a toy car that you put 1 euro coins in to make it go. Marta did this several times much to the annoyance of fellow travelers.

Our experience with Finnair was pleasant. They gave her free stuff - crayons and a stuffed panda bear - twice and Marta attempted to speak to them in Estonian, which was weird because they understood her perfectly well after some effort. When Marta said, "anna käsi" to the flight attendant she smiled and held Marta's hand. Behind our seat were a Latvian family. I am always struck by Latvians because I rarely meet them so I try to figure out just who these mysterious Latvians are.

Well -- all Latvians will kill me here -- but I thought they were speaking some kind of Slavic language. Yet I looked at the books they were reading, and sure enough those special Latvian letters were there, you know like 'skaitļotājs' (computer). At first they were quite friendly to my inquisitive daughter Marta but I think she started to wear on them after awhile. Somewhere in the US right now there is a very happy Latvian family crossing their fingers that Marta isn't on their next flight!

Anyway, Marta slept most of the way, only getting out of hand towards the end of the trip. She started climbing under the seat and spreading all the stuff she had accumulated -- dolls, bears, crayons, paper, hair extensions -- everywhere in our seating area. It started to even annoy me. Meanwhile, our plan was over Maine. I started to get really annoyed with the US states. I mean New Hampshire -- do you really need to exist? But eventually we touched down in New York, so far away from the place we had left. It was 3.30 pm New York time, and 10.30 pm in Estonia. That means we had been traveling for about 18 hours straight!

Marta was perky though. After hugs and kisses with Mimi, Papa, and Ian, we got home and subsequently passed out at around 7 pm, but not before I called Epp to tell her that we got in alright. :-)

Marta the Hood

Marta is a voracious wearer of clothing. On a normal day she may wear four or five outfits at different times, although we usually only put on two of them (regular clothes and pajamas). Anyway, she often finds her way into our wardrobes as well. One day she managed to put on my GW sweatshirt.

Curious George

Mom (Mimi) recently sent Marta the Curious George DVD. I have always really liked Curious George, and I have independently bought Marta Curious George books and even a stuffed Curious George monkey.

Watching the film, I got to thinking that Marta is sort of like Curious George and I am sort of like The Man in the Yellow Hat and that the books are a metaphor for parent-child relationships. I know this isn't that deep, but how much time have you spent thinking about Curious George?

Anyway, I am starting to think of Marta as my own little monkey that I must chase and stop from doing crazy things. And even when she gets a little too wild, I always forgive her. Just like The Man in the Yellow Hat and Curious George.

A Reading Rainbow

I have to admit, I was worried that Marta might never learn to read. She has shown for most of her life a general disinterest in academic-like things. Most of the time, I have been torn between thinking that she really knows these things, and is too lazy to show it:

ME: Marta, what letter is that?
MARTA: Yawn ...
ME: Marta, what letter is that?
MARTA: C'mon, let's play
ME: Marta, what letter is that?
MARTA: Yawn ... A

Other times I have caught her not knowing things, which really scares me. Yet all of a sudden she wants to read. She is literally bringing me books. Most of the books deal with animals, and so far I have read her to sleep two nights in a row!

Some of the books are ones that I remember. That is because they once belonged to me. Take the character above, from The Fantastic Funny Finger Book (Price/Stern/Sloan 1979). Here's the caption:

Is 'disco' even a word anymore? I'm not so sure. It's a referential word, but I don't believe that in English we use it as it was originally intended. But here I am in 2007, reading a book printed the year I was born to my daughter. And she is enjoying it.

Another book we read together is a McDuff book about a small West Highland Terrier. Eddie, the Westie in our family, sadly passed away last summer, but Marta hasn't forgotten him.

"I want to read about Eddie," she says to me. The McDuff books have a slow pace, but I think they're pretty satisfying. I don't mind reading about our friend McDuff.

Altogether, I am encouraged by our reading adventures. I have to say that I feel really good after reading her a couple of books. It's like exercise.

The Lives of Princesses

Did you know that there is a princess fad on? I was totally unaware until a fellow parent pointed me in the direction of this New York Times magazine article from December entitled What's Wrong with Cinderella?.

Diana may be dead and Masako disgraced, but here in America, we are in the midst of a royal moment. To call princesses a “trend” among girls is like calling Harry Potter a book. Sales at Disney Consumer Products, which started the craze six years ago by packaging nine of its female characters under one royal rubric, have shot up to $3 billion, globally, this year, from $300 million in 2001. There are now more than 25,000 Disney Princess items. “Princess,” as some Disney execs call it, is not only the fastest-growing brand the company has ever created; they say it is on its way to becoming the largest girls’ franchise on the planet.

In the article, author Peggy Ornstein discusses how this princess fad is actually confusing for our generation that grew up when the feminist movement was still going strong and little girls were given Our Bodies, Ourselves, not princess paraphenalia.

As a feminist mother — not to mention a nostalgic product of the Grranimals era — I have been taken by surprise by the princess craze and the girlie-girl culture that has risen around it. What happened to William wanting a doll and not dressing your cat in an apron? Whither Marlo Thomas? I watch my fellow mothers, women who once swore they’d never be dependent on a man, smile indulgently at daughters who warble “So This Is Love” or insist on being called Snow White. I wonder if they’d concede so readily to sons who begged for combat fatigues and mock AK-47s.

Like the author, I too watched "William wants a doll" when I was a kid, and I have sort of this idea in my head that too much Barbie is a bad idea for little girls. The idea is that those girls that get too much Barbie as little girls grow up to be obsessed with body image as teenagers and graduate to abusive relationships or anorexia or just being ho-bags in general.

But just try explaining that to my daughter as she puts on her crown and heads for the mirror:

Maybe it was the dentist’s Betty Boop inflection that got to me, but when she pointed to the exam chair and said, “Would you like to sit in my special princess throne so I can sparkle your teeth?” I lost it.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I snapped. “Do you have a princess drill, too?”

She stared at me as if I were an evil stepmother.

“Come on!” I continued, my voice rising. “It’s 2006, not 1950. This is Berkeley, Calif. Does every little girl really have to be a princess?”

My daughter, who was reaching for a Cinderella sticker, looked back and forth between us. “Why are you so mad, Mama?” she asked. “What’s wrong with princesses?”

Who can argue with that?

****

Being surrounded by this little princess all the time and accompanying princesses like cousin Simona, I have learned that I shouldn't fear "the princess" too much because deep down, little girls are beasties. Slate writer Michael Lewis asks questions about raising his daughter's properly in his recent article, "Have I Screwed Up My Daughters Forever."

Just four weeks after the birth of my son, both of my daughters are living, in effect, outside the law. They act as if they have nothing to lose, and, materially speaking, they don't. They've behaved so badly, for so long, that everything that might be taken away from them has been taken away: TV, candy, desserts, play dates, special dinners, special breakfasts, special outings with parents. They are like a pair of convicts in a Soviet gulag with nothing more than they need to survive—and still they continue to subvert the authorities. Oddly, their teachers all say that at school they remain little angels.

How true. I have seen Marta participate at lasteaed where she is polite as can be, but then at home, she turns into tough-girl Marta who hits her father and throws hysterical fits if she doesn't get something at a specific moment. I have a hard time taking "princess tantrums" seriously, and perhaps ignore them at my own peril. But do you really want to wade in when the legs and arms are flying?

I coat the first bite in whipped cream, swipe it once through the molasses, and, slowly, raise the fork to my mouth. Then I see Dixie's face. Her lower lip trembles and tears stream down her sweet little face. It's an involuntary response to a horrible realization: Daddy doesn't care. He's going to inhale his yummy dessert even though he knows Dixie can't have any. It takes a few seconds for the sobbing to kick in, as she runs from the room.

Sometimes Marta is just plain *dumb*. She argues with me over things that just cannot be argued. Take fire. I have told her it is very hot, but she has insisted on several occasions that it is very cold. Then there are the things she doesn't understand are prohibited, like pushing the washing machine buttons. What satisfaction does she get from that? I don't know, but she enjoys it.

Plus, she really isn't afraid of heights. She's constantly climbing, and fiercely independent. Today I was informed that I was not allowed to put her boots on. She could do it herself, so she said, until the point I actually put them on her.

Last night she took yogurt from the refridgerator while I was using this very laptop. She then proceded to dump the contents of the yogurt all over the floor. Did you know that cleaning up yogurt and cleaning up paint are very similar activities? I did not know this until last night.

This is my life, the life of a father trying to negotiate between a strong-willed child, Disney, other little princesses, yogurt, and fire.

That's not that there aren't enough tender moments to make up for this whirlwind. Every day when I pick Marta up from school she runs - runs - across the room and jumps into my arms like I was Michael Landon and life was Little House on the Prairie. She wraps her arms around me and is so happy that I am there. Words cannot describe - sniff - these fatherly moments. And I am glad that there are the beastie moments in between these moments though, so that I can relish the Little House on the Prairie moments more.

Speaking of beasties, the other night Marta and I got into a little back and forth after I called her a "beastie girl."

"I'm not a beastie girl!" she insisted. "You're a beastie boy!"

I'm a girl factory

I have an old friend who just gave birth to her second son this year. Another acquaintance is having his third boy. The neighbors downstairs had two boys too. But me? I'm a "girl factory" as my colleagues at work put it when I told them.

Last week Epp had to go to the hospital, or, more specifically, the women's clinic to rest. Without going into all the details, she needed to get off her feet for awhile. But during her stay they did an ultrasound and it turns out that there is a 95 percent chance we are having another little girl.

This is good for several reasons. The first is that we have boxes and boxes and boxes of barely used baby girl clothing. We also have femininely-inclined toys, princess castles, DVDs, and a very doting grandmother who likes to buy pink things.

Also good is that this also works with our family dynamic of having all the females in my life dump their estrogen-induced fury on me when they feel like it. Because I am accustomed to this, what's one more female in my life crying at the same time as all the others?

Third, perhaps most beneficial, is that I make a pretty lousy male role model. I don't watch organized sports, I'm not that handy with a drill, I can't take a car apart and put it back together, hell, I haven't tied a tie in awhile, and I am not sure if I could if I had to do it right now. In other words, I have no skills to pass on. If we had a son, it's highly likely that he would have a better grip on fixing household appliances than I would. Now, I can write songs and I am a talented writer and journalist. But if your car breaks down, you can't sing it back to life again.

Which leads me to think, are we given children of certain genders for certain reasons? Do certain dads get sons because they have skills to pass on, while other dads get daughters because they are better at dealing with estrogen-induced fury? Maybe so.

Anyway, I can officially stop banging my head against the wall now. This girl will be called Anna.

Laulasmaa

Last weekend we went to Laulasmaa, which is a resort about 35 kilometers (20 miles) from Tallinn. Laulasmaa boasted a nice swimming pool, saunas, and good food. To keep Marta and her cousin Simona occupied, I took the girls to the beach one afternoon.

Here is a photo of Marta making a snow angel:



And here she is on a swing:



This body of water is called Lahepera and it was mostly frozen when we got there. There was just a tiny opening in the clouds, which made the lighting very interesting:



Marta and Simona decided to try and move some of the sand from the frozen beach onto the ice to, I don't know, make things seem more beachy. I was very careful to make sure that they didn't get to close, and eventually I decided that we should go take a little hike in the woods nearby: