First You Count to 3 1/2

My wife is setting up her classrooms this week for the 2-year-olds during the week and the elementary and middle school artists on Sundays. I have taken time off to be with Rachel. I hereby confess, I am exhausted.

I have glimpsed the future as a parent of a teenager. I'm starting to shiver. Rachel is 3 1/2, going on 15.

Whatever you do it should be the opposite. You get her a soft-serve ice cream in a dish, she wants to know why not a cone. She doesn't feel like eating anything at lunch and then 45 minutes later, she tells you she is starving. You put on a video she requested and as soon as she hears you log on to the computer, she is by your side.

Ah, the computer. How she is fascinated by the computer! Or as she calls it, the pereeter. "Daddy, are you going to use the pereeter?"

"Can you visit dude with me?" That's another one. She calls the America Online symbol "dude." I have no idea why.

And in an image that's terribly disturbing to a father who often translates words to visual images, the other day, she referred to "Sponge Bob Squirty Pants." Apparently, dinner disagreed with him that night.

She has watched daddy log on and given time, can do it herself. I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't check out www.hunksofdisney.com! She is obsessed with Minnie Mouse right now. She wants to be Minnie at Halloween. She's also fond of Mickey Mouse, Pooh and "Donald the Duck."

She's a very sensitive child. One day, I introduced her to one of my uncle's caregivers, Maggie. Rachel's face scrunched up as she burst into tears. "No!!!! That's not Maggie," she trembled. We looked at each other quizzically until I realized the only Maggie to her was a female Little People character who wears red glasses.

And with age 3 come a number of idiosycrancies. I park on the left side of the drivway, so it's a straight path up to the front door. When I let Rachel out, she walks around to the passenger side and then proceeds to the front door.

At school orientation today, they had a wooden puzzle with six kinds of latches and locks. You'd undo each of them and see what's behind the six doors. Rachel figured all of them out within seconds. That's why we have the key to open the front door high above where she can't reach it.

We're working on manners. It's no longer cute to see a 3 1/2 year-old run around a restaurant because she is bored. So imagine our pride one night when she stayed with us at the dinner table. Then imagine our chagrin when she walked across the top of the table to get from one parent to another! Charming, just charming!

And with that, it's time to log off the pareeter. See you later, dude!