Life with a 4 year old

My recent homelessness has afforded me an unprecedented pleasure, living with my dear friends Jen and Gilbert and their four year old daughter, Amelie. Living with Jen and Gilbert isn't unprecedented, actually. They have been my oasis since 2000, the year I hiked my first section of the Appalachian Trail and they got married. Since then, I've come to stay for long weekends or weeks and have watched Amelie grow from infant to toddler to little miss. But before now, I've never actually lived with a child (except when I was one myself).

A few weeks ago, I even got to visit her preschool and give talks on living in Africa. Amelie called it my "elephant talk". I showed them a lot of my safari pictures and had them name the animals they saw. I gave four talks to different classes, and each one got better as I figured out what interested the children and what didn't. When I sensed a class getting antsy, I threw in a quick activity to help them refocus. They stood on one leg like a flamingo. They played with the "African ball" I'd brought in, made from rolling up dozens of plastic grocery bags and tying them together. They tried on Swahili kikoys, colorful wraps worn by women and men on the coast of Kenya. And the older kids played "Nyama nyama nyama" with me, a Simon Says type game.

The hardest part was keeping the children from inserting their own running commentary into my presentation. They kept speaking out of turn, usually about something only distantly related to the subject at hand. It was like being in a room full of Ralph Wiggums. "I want to be a triangle." After asking the children whether or not they'd seen The Lion King, I got a full listing of the movies they did have on DVD at home. "I have Bambi!" OK then.

It was a great learning experience for me, and hopefully made me better prepared to speak for my mom's preschool class in a few weeks.

Amelie is now on a short break from school, and we (mostly Jen) are doing our best to keep her occupied. Like her parents, she has already developed a love of quirky movies and quotes Napoleon Dynamite frequently. "Hey, Napoleon, give me some of your tots...No, I didn't get to eat anything today." She also sings Fiona Apple with her mother in the car. I took her to see Over the Hedge (critical review to follow in another post) two weeks ago, and she sat through the whole movie with me. But about halfway through, she leaned in and said, "Amy, I miss my mommy." I have no doubt I was a poor substitute.

The one lesson I'm still learning with Amelie is to be careful about everything I say. She's a sponge. Last night, her parents and I were discussing a variety of things over dinner, from politics to religion to movies. Gilbert mentioned that the Davinci Code has been banned in Kenya. So too was the movie The Constant Gardener, which was actually filmed there but portrays the government as corrupt (go figure). Gilbert said, "Rachel Weisz, she's cute."

"Cute?" I said. "She's beautiful."

Amelie responded, "She's cute and beautiful."

Jen, careful to try and instill the right values in her child said, "And she's very nice and intelligent."

Amelie thought about that for a second. "Nice and intelligent," she said, then added as an afterthought, "and a Democrat." So young to be so wise. :-)