In Bedtime Stories I write about my kids, now 6 and 9, when they were much younger. My then wife moved out when Ava was three and Chet eight-months old. For those of you who haven't read it yet I wanted to catch you up a bit on what they're like. I'll begin here with Ava. Here's some of what I wrote about her in the book:
"My kids are magnificent. Everybody says so. In general they seem to intuit that I could easily be overwhelmed by the task at hand so usually cut me some slack and get along. I had heard that having a girl first makes everything easier and that has certainly been true in my case. From the day Chet was born Ava has been the poor kid’s bossy, tween-aged mini-mom. Anna and I had read all the books on sibling rivalry and followed everyone’s advice simultaneously. We read to her, I’m a Big Sister Now and picked up the trick of conning her into believing that Chet had brought a little present from the beforeworld just for her. She was barely three when he was born and it wasn’t until a year later that she cornered me and said, Chet didn’t get me that jean jacket from the Gap, did he, daddy?
Like me she is sensitive and quiet. She taught herself to read before kindergarten and quickly loses herself inside the pages of any book.
My mom was a feminist squared, so growing up in the Seventies, I didn’t have a choice but to believe that a woman’s place was in the House and the Senate, and in my mom’s case, Yale Law School. She graduated magna cum laude from Howard, was all but her dissertation for her Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Michigan where she also taught, then when my sister and I were teenagers and she was thirty-three years old, she enrolled in the best and hardest law school in the country.
Three-year-old Ava, on the other hand, was passionate about cooking, baking, her nails, edible makeup and anything having to do with princesses.
I am terrified that she is going to grow up and become a Republican."
Six years later she's still a girly-girl, now Hannah Montana and iCarly and webkinz-obsessed. She's still addicted to reading, however, Nancy Drew is her drug of choice. Her teacher and I are trying our best to coax her into more challenging reading. She's stil giggly and silly around me, flings herself on me and sighs several times a day.
She makes me feel like Elvis.
