gor[b] Paul Gorbould: Words and Pictures

Tear it up

There's some part of the primitive brain that makes you feel happy when kids laugh... exploit it.

Wild thing

I've always thought that a child's choice of Halloween costume speaks volumes about the way they are put together.

The kid who wants to wear what everyone else is wearing, and the kid who wants to wear what nobody else has thought of. The kid who wears a different costume to school than for trick or treating, and makes three abortive costume changes in between. The boy who wants to be a pink ladybug, the girl who wants to be 50 Cent, the mom (or dad) who wants to be Slutty Nurse... Freud would have a field day. Maybe that's why I agonized for months over my costume choice as each Oct. 31 drew near - I'd be wearing my inside out.

My daughters' choices this year were embarrassingly obvious windows into their souls too. My four-year-old, ever easy going, looked at our existing costume rack and said, "Um, I'll be... a puppy dog." Grabbed her puppy dog costume, zipped it up and said, "Yep. Woof woof!"

My almost-six-year-old, on the other hand, decided back in March that she needed to be a wolf. Not just any wolf, but a white wolf with a grey tail like Max's wolf suit in Where the Wild Things Are.

Well, good luck finding a child size wolf suit. I tried. Since March I scoured the costume stores, rental places, catalogs, websites, eBay - you name it. No wolf suits. The closest the internet could provide were college mascot wolf suits for $1,000 each, or adult "sexy big bad wolf" costumes (perhaps so dad - or mom - could leer at Slutty Nurse.)

Fortunately, this year Aunty Alison came to the rescue, and made a Max's Wolf Suit for the record books. We started with a second-hand unicorn costume, and dismembered it in a manner befitting Lord Voldemort. Then she rebuilt the head, added buttons and feet, and crafted a long grey tail from a costume shop "old man beard". The claws were the crowning touch, built from a reconstituted "necklace of teeth" from the same shop. Et voila: wolf suit.

We're certainly not the first to try this idea, but I think it came off rather spectacularly.

It looks at least as good as this version, which won some sort of award at an English flower show.

And there's really no comparison to this big dude on the right, who looks like he's wearing it because he lost a bet.

And if I do say so myself, I think it looks better than the Hollywood version displayed in this shot from the upcoming Spike Jonze adaptation of the book, due out a year from now:

Though I have to say that looks like fun - it stars Catherine O'Hara, James Gandolfini and Forest Whitaker as the voice of one of the wild things.

And my wild thing roundup wouldn't be complete (and no, I'm not going to talk about Neve Campbell and Denise Richards making out in Wild Things - file that along with the nurse) without a link to the great animated version of the classic story.

Let the wild rumpus start!

Daughter of invention

Kid one-liner of the day:

"Daddy! I made an invention out of Cheerios and water, but it started to smell."

[my five-year-old, as I walked in the door the other day]

Emasculating dad

So, last weekend was absolutely lovely outside - or so I'm told. It was a bit of a tough one for me, because I was stuck inside with the girls. Actually it was even tougher for my eldest - she had a stomach bug, and on top of that her first pet fish died. Still, it was nothing I couldn't alleviate by spending all weekend in the basement making... princess crafts.

First up was this pair of "Pretty Princess Headresses" - design courtesy of a book of princess crafts we were given a couple of years ago. Now, I don't know if real princesses ever wore dunce caps covered in tissue paper and stickers, with streamers taped to the top, but the important thing is that my girls don't know either. Next time I'm at the Tower inspecting the Crown Jewels, I'll let you know.

After that came a 3D "Zigzag Castle Card", which made a nice backdrop for small plastic toys to cavort in front of. Not exactly how it looked in the illustration, but worse things can happen when you give a five-year-old a pair of scissors.

You'll be pleased to know that since the weekend a moat with alligators has been added. OK, that was me last night after the girls went to bed.

Did my masculinity suffer from so much girlishness? Not really - it has faced worse challenges over the past five years. (Also, Sunday night I hit Home Depot and fixed our toilet - booyah! Man again!)

In fact, I've been compiling a list for a friend of mine who just had a baby girl. Unfortunately I only have two items - three would be a bona fide list, but I'm stuck here. Perhaps you can help. It's called...

Signs you are the father of little girls:

1) You automatically sort your laundry into lights, darks and pinks.

2) You sit down to go pee, because you are just too tired to stand.

What else? Dan, Joe, surely you guys can help here... Tessa and Jayne must have observed a few masculine indignities... help me out?

------------------------------

UPDATE: And just like that, the thoroughly emasculated Sinsiter Dan heeds the call! Here's his list, which is bigger and better than mine by far:

I started writing a list in your comments on the 'father of girls syndrome', and it got a little longer than I had intended. Being a Letterman fan, I must have a predisposition to lists of ten;

1. Sometimes there is no alternative to accepting the role as the Evil Stepmother.

2. Every third sentence having to do with the bathroom ends with; "But not daddy, he's different" (I got this a lot in university too)

3. You know who Loonette the Clown is, and your creeping sexual attraction for her has become a matter of some concern.

4. You know who Loonette the Clown is, and apparently that's normal.

5. Even though they never show up, all the Disney princesses are still invited to Thanksgiving dinner.

6. "That's what Cinderella would do" becomes an acceptable argument.

7. Dora is okay, but suddenly seems Diego seems shifty.

8. Every day is a new lesson in things you didn't explain that made someone cry.

9. Your facial hair is added to the list along with quantum theory of stuff that makes no damn sense.

10. The difference between pigtails, ponytails and a topknot is now a subject on which you could write a doctoral dissertation.

Thanks, Dan!

No more teachers’ dirty… cars

Back to school... wow. I can hardly believe it, but both my kids are now in school, with Thing One entering Grade One and Thing Two off to Junior Kindergarten.

And of course my wife, a teacher, is back to school today also. I come from a long line of teachers, actually. As a kid, Labour Day always meant a barbeque with the families of other teachers - pink fluffy Jell-o desserts, kids throwing crab apples at each other, parents hoping they can drink the impending school year away, crashing the riding lawnmower, etc. Good times.

Anyhow, I've developed my own little back-to-school ritual, such as it is - each Labour Day I wash and clean out my wife's car. I've done this for about five years now, though my wife only noticed last year. It's one of those little things husbands do for wives, and which wives do 100 times more of for husbands.

So, now she can proudly roll into the teachers' lot in a shiny old Honda Civic, confident in the knowledge that the shocks won't give out under the accumulated summer's-weight of trunk sand and fishy crackers.

I usually do this by hand, but this year I took my 3-year-old Junior Kindergartener with me to a touchless car wash. She loves the car wash - and have you seen the rainbow coloured soap they have these days? Awesome! If Dove made that for the bath, she'd be a lot cleaner herself.

And as we left the wash bay sparkling clean, she uttered this little gem:

"Now our car is as clean as a weasel!"

Springfall

My five year old, looking at the flowers that have already fallen from the forsythia bush in our back yard:

"They look like they fell from a rainbow."

Fruitilicious

Thank goodness summer's almost here, so now my kids can eat lots of fresh fruits and vegetables.