6-yo

My widdle gwirl, Lori, is now 6-years-old. God, I swear it was just yesterday that she was 5… oh, that's because she was 5 yesterday.

I met Lori when she was (approximately) 1.5-years-old. She was cool and all, but her mastery of the English language was a bit limited and she liked to crap in diapers. Still, she was a lot of fun.

Then she turned 2 and I really didn't know what to expect. Well, she started crapping in the toilet and that was pretty sweet. And she also started talking more. 2 was a lot of fun. Everything was, "no". No, no, no, no, no. I was totally surprised at how awesome 2 was. Everybody talks about the "terrible 2's"… I don't get it; 2 rocked.

So when Lori turned 3, I wished a sad farewell to 2. I figured Lori had already peaked at the age of 2 and that life was downhill from here on out. You know, 3 turned out to be better than 2. 3 was the year of "why?" The "why?" stage was perfect for me. I loved explaining things to the minutest of detail. The river flows, because of two primary factors: 1) grade and 2) gravity … blah, blah, blah… so without grade the water would pool instead of flow and without gravity, well, we'd all be fucked. These interactions were possible because Lori could now sustain a functional conversation. To be able to communicate and verbally interact was awesome. I was the perfect dad for 3-year-olds. Ship all your 3-year-olds to me and I'll raise 'em proper.

Once again, I figured the father-daughter relationship had climaxed and I would be left yearning for the era of 3. And once again, I was wrong; 4 totally kicked 3's ass. First of all, my favorite "why?" stage lasted well into the 4's. Second, Lori's motor skills started kicking in and she was stitching Nike swooshes like a pro. For three months straight she won the employee performance award at the local Nike sweatshop. Go Lori! I still have those plaques hanging on her bedroom wall. Third, Lori started a half-day preschool program. The next thing I know she's counting and developing social skills. It was all so fascinating.

True to the trend, as good as 4 was, 5 was better. I'm talking about kindergarten. She was writing her letters, learning their sounds, and figuring out how to read. It blew my mind watching her mind grow. Lori can fire up the DVD player or ps2. She can make her own PB&Js. She can use the microwave to re-heat leftovers. She can walk down to the corner store and buy daddy a pack of Camels and a case of Shlitz. She started learning karate. Her brain is continuously clicking and making new connections.

I'm guessing 6 will be even better. She's already starting to read, I bet in a year she'll be able to plow through words like "encyclopedia" and "thorough" and "muthafucka". I can't wait for her to read Atlas Shrugged, The Bagavad-Gita, and Shogun, then we can stay up really late, like 10PM, and paint our toenails and talk about the deeper social implications of these books. Maybe, dare I hope, she'll be breezing through Laplace transformations and refining Plank's Constant within the next 12-months. Who knows?

I shall wait and see.
...and so it was written, shenry at 9/08/2004 11:26:00 AM.
...and so it was appended with .