One of the more amazing phenomena I’ve witnessed as a father is the ability of a child to remember a toy quite suddenly, and without exception, a few days after I’ve discarded it.

Whenever the toys and animals and various bits of happy meal collectibles begin to accumulate too quickly, I try to ease the clutter by removing items my girls haven’t touched forever.  I’ll dig to the bottom of the stuffed animal basket and remove small frogs or fluffy owls with valentine hearts painted on their wings.  I’ll reassemble the arms and legs of a decapitated robot and collect all the scribbled-on coloring books whose torn pages litter the floor.  Then I’ll sort the collection of items into various categories:  sentimental favorites to box up and save; seldom used toys perfect for donating to all those charities that call during the day; and, of course, garbage.

As fate would have it, I engaged in this activity a week ago.  One of the items was a gift from my parents to my oldest daughter: a green monkey with an M&M logo on its chest.  She and the monkey enjoyed their time together, but they hadn’t shared a meaningful conversation in months.  I doubt Senior Monkey witnessed anything but eternal darkness during that time, buried as he was beneath a mound of other toys.  So the green M&M fellow, appropriately named Squeaker for the annoying noises he made, was relegated to the “box up and save” category, and thus vanished from existence.

The inevitable happened yesterday morning.  My four-year-old daughter, affectionately named Smartypants, approached me with a question.  “Daddy,” she said, “Where is my Squeaker?”

And here I lied.  “I don’t know.”

But she was on to me.  “Well, Daddy, I looked in the basket where he usually is and he wasn’t there.  I looked in my room, and under my bed, and in my closet, and he wasn’t there.  I don’t think he went in your room.  Do you know where he could be?”

“Haven’t seen him in a long time.  You don’t ever play with him.  Maybe he got put away.”

“Actually,” she says, like the adult she already pretends to be, “I do play with him.  He is my other monkey’s brother and they miss each other.  So I really must find him.”

What do you say to that?  It’s astounding.  I know she never plays with that green monkey, but in her mind there is no difference between a toy she played with yesterday and one she hasn’t touched for eons.  It’s as though children immediately notice when someone has trespassed in their treasured realm—a daring and altogether stupid thing to do, in their minds—and their little brains start churning and running down an itemized checklist of known toys.  Anything that turns up missing is immediately referred to Daddy as Lost, and Daddy is quickly expected to reproduce it or face exile.

In this case, Daddy reproduced the monkey, if only to prevent the other monkey from suffering a lifetime in the basement without a brother.  Other toys about which she has inquired will remain safely hidden (or, in some cases, in the hands of other children) forever.  If they all came back, what would be the point?

All I know is I wish sometimes my memory was as good as hers.  It’s amazing.  And if it continues, there will be lots of sad, lonely toys in our house searching for lost loved ones.  Overcrowding and overpopulation will decimate entire families, and there’s nothing to be done.  We must all part with things we love.  It’s a sad lesson, but one that green monkey’s brother will soon have to learn.

About six weeks ago, my son Elijah discovered his first loose tooth. Bottom center.  He spent the next few weeks eating everything on the side of his mouth so he would not disturb the tooth.  Every few days, I checked the status of the tooth, or as I called it - The Wiggle Factor. We started at a Wiggle Factor of 1 and worked our way up to an 8 over a few weeks.

Then, one morning, Elijah came upstairs holding the tooth.  He said he woke up and it was sitting on his tongue.  Now, most kids, I would think, would be out of their minds with excitement about losing their first tooth.  My wife and I were certainly excited that our first born had lost his first tooth.  Not Elijah.  His first comment was “I wonder what the Tooth Fairy will leave for me!”

“Elijah, you lost your first ever TOOTH!!  Aren’t you excited?”

“Ask me tomorrow after I check under my pillow.”

So that night, he placed the tooth under his pillow and went to sleep.

My wife and I were prepared.  We had asked around to our friends with young kids on what the going rate was for a tooth these days.  We heard everything from a quarter to three bucks.  Elijah was expecting us to re-mortgage the house so, no matter what we left him he would probably wonder why it wasn’t more.  In any case, we decided on three bucks.  We looked in our wallets.  All we had was a $5 and a $10.  I wasn’t running out to cash a $5 bill at 10:00pm so we decided to give him the $5. We figured it was his FIRST lost tooth so why not a small bonus, right?

We woke up the next morning and Elijah was watching TV.  He says, “I didn’t think the Tooth Fairy existed!”

“Oh, she exists,” I explained.  “AND she lives right here in Utah.”

Why I said that, I had no idea..but it came in handy just a few seconds later…

“She left me $5 and took my tooth!”

“Yeah - I figured she would leave you more than she usually leaves for most kids because she had less distance to travel to get here.”

He seemed happy with the $5 reward.  Surprised us.  I said to my wife that he finally seemed content with what he got.  Maybe he was growing up!

That morning he called my mother to tell her about the Tooth Fairy.

“She only left me ONE five dollar bill......”

Gotta love kids.

Carmi and I adopted our daughter, Eliana, from China on October 29, 2002. She was 8 months old at the time and just turned 4 back in February. We constantly brag about what an ‘easy’ child she was and still is today.

We are now in the midst of paperwork to bring our second daughter home from China. From the moment we both agreed that Eliana needed a little sister, I’ve had this feeling of ‘dread’ in the pit of my stomach that we couldn’t possibly be so lucky twice in a row.

But then I stop and ask myself, “How exactly would I define ‘easy’?”

Eliana can enjoy a good 2-3 hour nap in the afternoon and still sleep through the night. She has slept through the night since only her fourth night at home. However, she must always have someone lay down with her while she goes to sleep and it had better be mommy. If I so much as hint that daddy would like a turn, there is a major meltdown with a deluge of crocodile tears and then mommy must come in for damage control. Daddy will simply not do unless mommy just happens to be away from home which is extremely rare.

Eliana loves music and loves to sing which thrills me because music is such an important part of my life. She especially loves to sing in the car and she happens to sing very well for her age. However, there are two CDs that she likes and two songs in particular on each of the CDs and these are the ONLY songs she wants to hear. Whether we are just driving somewhere in town or on a 4-hour road trip, the same songs are repeated ad-nauseum. If we exercise parental authority and play a different song, our ears are pounded with a constant barrage of “but I don’t know THAT one!” until it’s simply not worth the effort to try and listen.

Eliana has an affinity for water. She is quite comfortable in the ocean or a swimming pool. She especially likes bath time and the opportunity to play in the bubbles, splash and squirt daddy with a various assortment of ‘squirting’ toys. There is usually much laughter…until…it’s time to wash her hair. As we lather, the whining starts and reaches a crescendo at the rinse cycle. We fill a measuring cup, pour the water over her head and then repeat this process several times to wash away the shampoo. With each cupload of water, she screams as though she were being stabbed to death.

Is Eliana an easy child?

There is certainly a fair amount of sacrifice required of parents as there is always bad to go along with the good. And it’s worth it all when that little girl squeezes my neck and says, “I love you, daddy”.

At 10:50 this past Saturday morning, when Leah was out doing the food shopping and Lexy, almost two, was chucking a wobbly (a delightful Australian expression that means ‘to throw a tantrum’) on the tiled floor of the study because we’d just been rained out on our walk to the park, and Tyler (seven months) was sitting once again in the jogging stroller, which I’d wheeled into the study because he’d pulled himself to stand against the computer and fallen onto his bottom, then his back, and his screaming had set Lexy off again—I realized, in a half-exasperated, half-guilty glance away from the screen at Tyler’s startlingly mature expression of worry, that the only thing I knew for sure about happiness is that it’s not always found on bumper stickers or even at the end of meaningful effort: for parents, being happy isn’t a right or privilege or quest, it’s a responsibility.

Some people claim that it is of utmost importance that a father tells his child, “I love you”. Failure to do so allegedly stunts the growth of the child’s security, self-confidence and self-esteem.

I say phooey.

I occasionally say “I love you” to my toddler son. I am not sure, though, that I will say it as often as he gets older. It’s not that I don’t plan on loving him as much; rather, I just don’t feel comfortable expressing my love to him in that way. I am much more demonstrative than expressive.

My wife Jane would probably not have a problem with what I’m writing here. While growing up, her mother almost never initiated an “I love you” (although Jane would have liked it), whereas her father was more liberal in saying it. The way she recalls it, whether or not she felt loved by her parents had nothing to do with how frequently or infrequently they verbally assured her of their love.

Having just made a case for not having to say “I love you” all the time, there is one reason that a non-expressive dad like me should overcome his dislike for being mushy - if that’s what the kid needs. You all have probably heard of the book The Five Love Languages, right? Well, you’ll know then that ‘words of affirmation’ is one of these love languages. That’s what speaks love to my wife, and therefore I make attempts to love her through words. It’s hard, and I’m not great at it, but I try. And if that’s your child’s love language as well, guess what? Say the “I love you’s”. It might not feel as sincere to you personally, but your children will appreciate it along with the other ways you love them.