If I could sit Caira down and ask her to list what her favourite things about us are, I think that she would write

Daddy says yes

on my first line, whereas Mariah’s first line might start with

Mummy is mummy

No more need be said. Mummy is the one you curl up against to sleep, who kisses your knee better when you scrape it and generally makes sure you remain healthy, fed and clothed. Daddy says yes. Want to go on the higher slide? Want a treat when mummy’s not looking? That’s my department: The Ministry of Treats and Playtime. Every place has its person and every person has their place, but I still wrestle with the question of whether we are doing a good job or not.

Are we? Little sleep yields stark questions.

For half of the week we both work, which means getting up at 5 o’clock in the morning, dressing Caira and bringing her to her grandparents home where she gets to revel in the sheer joy of being a two-year old for ten to twelve straight hours. When we pick her up at six in the evening we’re all tired and after we get home we watch TV, play with the animals, have dinner and rot in front of our computers. On Thursday and Fridays Mariah usually takes Caira out to go shopping and to go to parks. On Saturdays her grandparents usually ninja her away again (although for this weekend everyone is off to California) and Sundays are usually spent sitting around the house and trying to unwind.

Is that enough? She has a fierce, bright intellect which picks up everything she sees, analyzes it and then applies it in context. When Mariah gave her a drink last Sunday which was watered down because the ice melted, Caira set it aside, looked straight at my wife and said, ”this is practically water.” She can manage recognize abstract concepts. When Mariah and I play World of Warcraft, Caira is right there, sitting with us, chatting about Mummy and Daddy Cow killing monsters and interacting with our avatars. She knows it’s us and she already wants to play with us. Caira can moo-ve my character (heh). She can read a few scattered words already; the titles of her favourite TV shows, labels on boxes and a few book covers and I feel that early exposure to computers will be extremely beneficial to her reading and comprehension skills down the road.

So Caira’s learning. Is she happy? Her new favourite comes from World of Warcraft: My character taking a shrink potion and swift run potion and zipping about the screen as a knee-high Tauren. You should hear her laugh and snort when I do this. She loves to wrestle with me, jump on mummy hold the cats. We watch her shows with her, sit down with her when she reads her books and inform her as best we can about anything she cares to ask about. How many two year olds understand lolcat captions, I ask of you?

I feel we could do a lot better at weekends; set a schedule of activities for her and keep to it, but time and money constrain us, which isn’t so good.

We make do, on the whole. I’ll let Caira decide if we’re doing well or not, but she’s happy and I’ll put it up as a win for now.

I’ll start with a quick mention of +1 common sense. I expect (statutory) compensatory stupidity in the near to middle future.

Frank Herbert once commented that “…the mind commands the body and is obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance.” I occasionally have the opposite problem: I can imagine in detail any number of storylines in exquisite detail, or rant about those bastard motherfuckers, you know the ones, right? But at the moment when it comes to writing it down my hand turns into a lump of dead wood that can barely bash out a few mongrel sentences at best. Fucking hand. I stare at the traitorous thing and order it to write more; it resists. I ask for a why, and it shrugs. Seriously, fucking hand. It has made this blog into a chore to update because the lack of any recent photos. No longer can I just get by by posting an image, adding a blurb and calling it a day until tomorrow. And you, fucking hand, make even that difficult.

Fuck it, photos will follow eventually. Like The General, THEY ARE COMING.

Caira has started to pick up on World of Warcraft, which is somewhat scary. While at the supermarket on Saturday night Caira insisted that cats go meow, dogs go woof, ducks go quack and cows go RAWR! Shit, heh. She’ll sit down with Mariah or I and insist that it’s her turn now, which is awfully adorable and frightening in one neurotic bundle that’s only exaggerated by our suspicions that she can already read a few words here and there on screens, mostly those of her favourite television shows. I can believe this on the grounds that reading is mostly pattern recognition. I’m very happy that she can do this and I have copies of The Hobbit, Dune and The Lord of the Rings waiting in the wings for her next few birthdays. But still, frightening. She’s two, for Christ’s sake…

I solo’d two parts of Scarlet Monastery last night, the Library and Armory, for which I’m quietly proud of myself. Another few levels and I’ll be running twinks through there like it’s a breeze. I got the Scarlet Belt, Tabard and Berserker’s Helm, while Mariah got the Scarlet Leggings, Scarlet Pants, a nice green bow and some other really nice loot to sell. Fun was arguably had by all. Follow the link above to see Shahadet in his current glory. Level 45 and spec’d into Enhancement for the sheer fun of beating the living crap out of anything that comes within melee range of him. He’s like a plus-sized Rogue with healing spells. Glee.

THANK YOU FOR NUMBER 65, Jen. It meant a lot because you’ve been an a friendly ear and a shoulder to lean on when you had every reason in the world to not be.

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Going from day to day over the last, I’ve always felt that Las Vegas has lacked something, some indefinable feeling that something is just wrong about the city. It took me until last night, when we were driving past a food stand on our way to the hospital (more below) to precisely pin down what it was: The city is too planned, and this fact takes away the feeling of belonging that comes with many other places I’ve been, both big and small. The city is a straight grid dropped down over the desert; north to south and east to west. There’s a retail park here, a housing development there, public amenities over here and here. I’m not going to admit to a belief in feng shui, but I will admit that Las Vegas feels a little like Minas Morgul at times, that it’s a place which really shouldn’t be.

Back to the hospital: Mariah has had a bad ear infection for the last four days, but took until last night before she would finally go to the hospital and get it looked at. Their resident ear and throat specialist referred to it as ”all funky” and sent her home with a prescription for ear and pain medication at a cost (so far) of almost two hundred dollars. What’s wrong with America that they can’t have universal health care like oh, everywhere else? It was sickening that the first and last things we were asked were, “Have you insurance?” “How would you like to pay?” Why wasn’t it, “Where does it hurt?” It pissed me off no end that this country can be so backward at times because I come from a country where the most pressing medical question isn’t how the patient will pay!

She’s home on the couch, sick, now.

I took a few photos of Caira yesterday, to prove that can still do it. I’m not going to say what I think of where my photographic skills stand, but I will say that I find that I’m still in love with the fifty. I have this horribly afflicted love for bokeh and the lens is still perfect, if cheap, for it.

Last, but not least, I’m an uncle, as of Thursday night Friday morning. Ella Mary Grealish was born at 0200 on May 16 2008, underweight but otherwise healthy. Nice one Jen.