Evelyn

Back when Evelyn was four, we let the truth about the Easter Bunny slip. Actually, it was my wife Kim who let it slip. Easter morning when we were all a little giddy on chocolate, Evelyn shared her suspicions about who the Easter Bunny really was, and Kim fessed up. Same thing happened with Santa two years later. We were sitting in front of the tree on Christmas day, and Evelyn asked, for about the hundredth time, if we were Santa. And so we told her. After a moment of shock, she said she wished she didn't know.

That was just over a year ago. Since then the Tooth Fairy's the only bit of magic we've had left. I've got to say, the Tooth Fairy isn't my favourite imaginary character. The height of individualism and commerce, she's about as Republican as they get: The Tooth Fairy comes for you and only you, and she leaves you cash. All the same she was what we had left--Evelyn's last connection to that good, innocent world where magic does happen. (Okay, I suppose you could count Leprechauns, but even I find it a stretch to argue that mischievous little green people are living in our yard.)

The problem with Tooth Fairies is that they operate in different ways all over town. One day Evelyn came home saying you could tell the colour of a Tooth Fairy by leaving your tooth in a glass of water. I hadn't even realized there were different types, but apparently the water's colour next morning indicates which fairy visited. A few weeks after telling us this, Evelyn popped her first tooth. It was her grandfather's birthday and we were at a cabin in Oregon. We'd had a bit to drink that night, so by two in the morning when I remembered our Tooth Fairy duties, the only thing I could find to colour the water was root beer.

In the morning, Evelyn noticed the scent. "That smells like root beer." I tried not to smile, but sometimes it feels good to be outsmarted by your kids--reassurance that the genes you passed on are okay after all.

I told her it must have been the root beer Tooth Fairy.

When your kid knows you're Santa and the Easter Bunny, it's a battle to convince her you're not the Tooth Fairy. Last week she lost another and told us something new about the Tooth Fairy. Apparently you can save up all your lost teeth until your birthday then the Tooth Fairy brings something really big. Unfortunately, those baby teeth are tiny. We lost that one tooth three times before nightfall so there was no way it was lasting nine months. My wife said Evelyn could keep it a couple of days then the Tooth Fairy was coming for it.

Next morning I woke Evelyn for school. Covers pulled up to her chin and still drowsy, the first thing she did was reach under her pillow. She pulled out the tiny box where she'd been keeping the tooth and rattled it. "It's still there. Now I know you're the Tooth Fairy. I put it under just to test."

Have I mentioned how good it feels to be outsmarted by your own kid?

Of course, it also plucked a deeper chord. Realizing there are no magical creatures sharing kindness around the world is one of the tough lessons of growing up. I realize it's sometimes harder for the parents than the kids--especially if like me you used to threaten to cancel your three year old's birthday so she'd stay three forever--but I can still recall the shock from when I was a kid. People talk about remembering where they were when Kennedy was shot. I remember where I was when I learned there was no Santa Claus.

A few days ago, I asked Evelyn about why she suspected the truth. She doesn't remember back as far as the Easter Bunny and Santa, but it was the inconsistencies that tipped her off about the Tooth Fairy. So I figure, if we want to keep our kids believing, we need to get a few things straight. Is the Tooth Fairy male or female? Is there more than one or is she like Santa and we all have to share her? Could she really get away with giving less for a tooth with a filling? What about this idea you can save up teeth for something bigger? The big one, of course, is how much money she gives. We need agreement on that. And that just takes care of the Tooth Fairy--we still have Santa and the Easter Bunny to cover. If we're going to outsmart the kids, we need to get organized. I'm going to put it on the agenda for our next PAC meeting.

Tessa

As a child, I loved to skate--indoor rinks, outdoor rinks, frozen ponds, hockey arenas. Some of my fondest memories are of those rare times you could speed in a straight line across the entire length of a windswept pond. And of course, I loved to retreat to the damp warmth of the skating huts when the day was done--the cheery crackle of a wood stove, the odd time when there was hot chocolate or apple cider on the go.

In these ways it was a classic Canadian childhood. As an adult however, I shrink from temperatures below zero. Victoria's as mild as you can get without leaving the country, and that accounts for my life here. With my three kids, Sundays at the Oak Bay Rec Centre haven't been for skating in toques and mitts, but for a soak in the hot tub or the baby pool (which is at least as warm as bathwater).

My wife is American and so she doesn't feel any nationalistic need to ensure her kids can skate, but somewhere deep inside me, despite my dislike of cold and my aching knees, I still do. Last weekend, instead of going to the pool on Sunday, I took the kids to the rink. We rented skates and got everybody bundled up. Our youngest, Vivian, is only 3 so she stayed in the stroller and just called out for someone to push her fast. Evelyn and Tessa both laced up. Fortunately, Evelyn met a friend and both are old enough that they could cling to the boards or to the stroller's handles and take care of themselves. Tessa's just 5 and so I took her hand and we went out together.

We inched forward while younger kids flew by, blades sharp on the uneven ice. Tessa teetered and fell to her knees. I picked her up but then soon she was down on her bum. Other kids rocketed by. Tessa spun ice-ward. Even a few tentative steps in and I could see this was going to be difficult. Her friend Lilly, only a year older, was zipping around with ease while Tessa tripped and her legs went different directions, almost split her in two as she fell.

Tessa and I tried various configurations as I both pushed the stroller and tried to help her skate. I held her a while then let her go. I took one hand, then both, then neither. I skated backwards in front of her and forwards behind her. And all through it she was up and down. By half way around the rink, she was in tears. We couldn't figure it out. I'd learned to skate so young, I couldn't really remember how I'd learned, but I did tell her that you need to fall to improve. Her older sister Evelyn was sticking to the boards, not taking risks, and I pointed that out. It didn't help. By the end of our first lap, Tessa was banged and bruised and crying with frustration.

I set her back on her skates while she sobbed. I was frustrated too: my knees were already a little sore, and while I could obviously skate, I didn't know how to teach my child. "Lets go sit you down. You can wait on the bench."

"No." She wiped away tears.

I lifted her from the ice. "How about I carry you back?"

"No."

"A ride in the stroller?"

"No." She was still crying. She kicked and her skate hit my shin. A kid no more than four sped by fast enough I could feel the wind in his wake.

"Well then what is it that you want?"

"I want." She paused between sobs. "To learn to skate."

"Oh." A little stillness settled inside me. "Okay." I set her down and we continued to inch forward. She fell and stood and fell for almost another hour, but somehow we made it around the rink bit by bit, slowly learning to skate together.

Vivian

Last week I was outside hanging wash on our brand new clothes line. Vivian, our three year old, came out, pointed at the line and said, "We just found that. Tessa spotted it in our back yard."

"How do you think it got here?" I asked.

Viv shrugged. "The builders put it here," she said.

I'd actually put it up myself just hours before, but I didn't correct her. These snapshots into the mind of a three year old are too much fun to dispel. Instead, I nodded, and said she should be sure to thank the builders. She watched me a moment then said, "No, I won't thank them."

Vivian's the youngest of our three kids, our final chance to see the world through the eyes of a three year old, and the whole family is enjoying it. Just about every day, our other kids, Tessa and Evelyn, recount something funny Viv has said like, "Bagel, that's French for doughnut" or her reply when asked if she'd ever get her ears pierced: "No, I'm going to get my arm pierced." All parents have these kinds of stories, but this is our last preschooler, and so this time I felt the need to put them in writing.

A couple of days after the wash line incident, I told Viv I'd like to write a story about her. Her face brightened. Her eyes went a little wide. She didn't say much just then, but about an hour later she marched up to me and said, "Okay, now can you draw me that book." In Vivian's world, a story is a book not an article in Island Parent, but I didn't get involved in differentiating the two. "What should the story be about?" I said.

"A princess." She said that without missing a beat. She was dressed up. She was wearing pink. She did a half pirouette with her hands over her head.

"Are you a princess?"

She nodded. "Because I have a princess dress and do dress up."

"Tell me what makes a princess a princess."

"You put a pretty dress on, put it on long, put high heels on like this." She started to dance around. "And you need a crown. Because Princesses are pretty. They spin around and go to sleep with their night gowns on." She paused. "And that's all." She spun around again. "And Princesses don't have pajamas," she said at last.

"And when you get older, will you still be a princess?"

"I'll become a real princess."

"What does a real princess do?"

"Walk around in a castle."

"And what will you do after that?"

"I'll go home. I'm going to be a mommy and then a daddy and then a princess again. And then I'll have babies and I'll have five babies and they'll all be five and they'll all be girls."

During most of our conversation, Viv was dancing or walking about. She sort of came in and out of the interview. In the end, our chat just petered out. Later in the evening though she approached with a marker. "Here's a marker. I'm going to write my name on the back of that book you're going to make for me and you can do a picture." I told her it was going to be an article not a book, but she wouldn't listen. She started marching around holding the marker like a microphone. "Time to make my book," she sang. "Time to make my book."

After brushing her teeth that night, I told her again that it wasn't going to be a book. Just an article. In a magazine. She seemed okay with that. On her way to bed, she said, "Okay, now you can draw me that article book."

"It's going to take a bit of time," I said.

"How about you do it now and when you're done you can bring it up to me."