I think my daughter Regine may have inherited the 62% evil from me. Or possibly more. How do I know? There have been signs, which I initially chose to ignore. But now that the signs are getting more distinctive, I have every cause to get concerned about her.

The earliest sign was when my aunt bought her a doll when she was 1. It was a rather strange doll (to me), with big blue eyes and all. I don’t know if kids are suppose to find that thing cute but, my Regine was totally freaked out when she saw the doll. She’d cringe and cry whenever it was near her. She would get as far as possible from the doll, as if that thing was emitting hazardous radioactive rays. I didn’t think it was abnormal back then because that doll indeed looked quite creepy.

So, my mom bought her another doll, and that was like, a few months later. She was almost 2 then. The new doll didn’t have big blue eyes on it and was very much more pleasant looking. Again, like the first one, she was totally freaked out. That was when I started to feel uneasy.

“Aren’t little girls suppose to like dolls and stuff?” I asked Emily.

But my Regine is different. Instead of dolls, she is fond of feral creatures… like rubber lizards, spiders and dinosaurs (which, my mom originally bought with the intention to discipline her… you know, – ‘I’m gonna put this spider on your hair if you don’t eat your porridge now’)

But of course, that didn’t work. Those rubber creatures turn out to be her favorite, and she used it to her advantage, to scare my friends’ children when they came visiting. There was once, she even tried to grab a live lizard at a clinic and mind you, that thing was big. Any kid would have been scared shitless of that enormous lizard. But not my Regine. Had I not stopped her from grabbing it, that lizard would have gone to meet its maker already.

And then recently, after we played her the Disney animated film “Cinderella”, she went to Emily and said “Mommy, I want to be the stepmother…” Like, most – if not all – children would have wanted to be the beautiful lass (Cinderella), right? But my daughter thinks it is much cooler to be the evil stepmother…

“I want to be the stepmother!”
“Mommy! Come! I lock you in the room!”
“Daddy! Go stand at the corner!”

Anyone have any remedy for this? I’m beginning to freak out now…

caught in the act trying to push an owl off its perch…

A couple weeks ago, my 2.5 year old daughter saw my cousin’s cleavage and exclaimed “I can see your boobies!”. That of course drew some laughs amidst bewilderment from some of my relatives that night, as it was quite uncommon for kids her age to know such word. Thanks to her daddy and mommy. And in fact, she knows it a little too well.

Just last night, while I was putting her to sleep with Emily, my daughter rested her hand on my tummy and asked me this in a serious tone,

Regine: “Daddy, do you have boobies?”

She was looking at my chest of course. She must have spotted my muscular chest (alright, fat).

Me: “Of course not. Daddy is a boy. Boys don’t have boobies.”

I conveniently lied.

Regine: “Mommy have boobies?”

Me: “Yes, mommy is a girl, so she has boobies.”

Regine: “Regine have boobies?”

Me: “Not yet. Because you’re still a little girl. Little girls don’t have boobies.”

That was when Emily decided to help me out there.

Emily: “You’re still a little girl. No boobies yet.”

Regine: “Little girl aa?”

Emily: “Yes. You’ll only have boobies when you grow up.”

Regine: “Grow up aa? Boobies aa?”

Emily: “Yes. That’s right.”

But I sensed the skepticism there, and I had the hunch that she must be thinking, what a bunch of liars we are. Boobies to her are like, objects protruded out of someone’s chest. That means, if anyone were to stuff a couple boxes of Kleenex into their blouse, then that person will have a pair of boobies. Boobies are like, so cosmetic. Why can’t a boy/man have boobies then? What are those things on their chest then? The reality must have skewed her logic greatly and I can understand that.

The truth is, everyone has boobies. I have boobies, even bigger than some bulimic bitches at my office, that’s for sure. For me (as a guy) to not have a pair of boobies, I must be scrawny like a cadaver. And needless to say, there are also shitloads of girls without boobies as well. Some guys are also more well endowed than an average girl. Eg. Simon Cowell, or Russell Crowe in this recent pix of his here with his massive man-boobies (ironically, with a girly pony tail and a beard)…

Now, how do you explain these to a 2 year old? We can’t. We are trying to make her perceive that boobies are for babies to have their nutritional needs, but we’re struggling. Even if we manage to convince her, we know it won’t hold for long. She’s too smart to be deceived, and I dread of the day having to explain to her why some aunties have huge boobies but no babies… or why that uncle with a twin patch of sweat marks on his armpits have boobies bigger than mommy (haha, I was thinking of The Gimp)…

It’s tough to bring up a kid nowadays…

Bedtime, inside the room, it was dark.

Emily (my wife): “Regine, do you want milk?”

Regine (my 2 yr old daughter): *Nods*

Emily saw her nodding, but decided to prod for a verbal answer… because we parents are all so sadistic like that…

Emily: “It’s dark in here, mommy couldn’t see if you’re nodding. Again, do you want milk?”

Regine: *Nods*

Emily: “No… you have to say, ‘Yes or No’…”

Regine: “Yes or No.”

Emily: *blood pressure shoots through the scale*

I’m so proud of my girl…

Regine was at the playground playing when she came across this tunnel. She wanted to enter the thing but, she somehow hesitated. Being a pair of supportive parents (alright, wannabes…), we gave her a few words of encouragement for her to go through it.

“Go on, go into the tunnel. Don’t be afraid… Mommy will be on the other side, and daddy will be behind you…”

But she didn’t budge. It must be the longest tunnel she has ever seen. The previous tunnels we brought her to, were all short and looked very much safer. But this was different. It was oblique, and a bit dark as well. God knows what manner of creatures could be lurking in there, she must have thought. And just when we were about to give her another push, my Regine said the darndest thing ever…

“The tunnel is so BIGGGG! Regine is so small… Cannot!”

We were both amused and surprised, because we’ve never actually heard her express herself like that before, especially when she gestured the ‘BIG’ adjective with her open arms and used her thumb/index to show how ‘small’ she is compared to the tunnel, with a somewhat miserable facial expression.

After we laughed our hearts out, I kind of acknowledged that maybe the tunnel was too intense for her, and I told Emily that maybe we should try it again when she’s older. But Emily was relentless, and decided to give one final push. She crawled through the monster infested hell hole herself… you know, to lead by the example to see if Regine would follow. Regine procrastinated a little while, and eventually went into the tunnel and came out from the other side.

I tell you man, I couldn’t have been prouder and any more impressed. Had my baby not contrasted to us that it was hell of a task for her to crawl through that shit, I wouldn’t have felt it that much. This, people, is called ‘lowering the expectations’ and when you score, you score it with colors – more or less the same as ‘Lesson #2′ featured in my ‘What have I learned?‘ post. Dirty trick but, works all the time.

It took her old man 20 over pathetic years to learn that, but my baby already knew how to do it intrinsically (goddamn!)

Like I said, I couldn’t have been any more impressed.

My Regine already started singing when she was about 18 months (she’s going to be 2 in June). But most of the time, we couldn’t get what she sang because they were mostly bits and parts of random songs that happened to come across her mind at that time. But things changed about a few weeks back, when we started to hear her singing proper songs (though incomplete).

Last Sunday, I had the rare opportunity to record that down. When I heard her repeating the same song inside her room after taking her bath, I immediately whipped out my phone and said to her “Regine, daddy’s going to count to three… and once I finish counting, can you sing to daddy’s phone?”, and she did exactly just that.

Following is the recording in MP3 format — to download, right click on the link and select ‘Save Link As’ if you’re using FireFox, or ‘Save Target As…’ if you’re using IE.

File – Recording.mp3 (192 KB)

She was actually singing –
Tommy Thumb, Tommy Thumb,
Where Are you?
Here I am, Here I am,
How do you do.

And frankly speaking, she is already a better singer than some of my monotonous friends… and daddy is so frigging proud of her…