You Say It's Your Birthday? Well It's My Birthday, Too, Yeah....


Today Rhiannon is six. Yesterday she was five. But now she is officially a "big-girl". She is in first grade. She has asked to use real plates that do not have cartoon characters on them and real silverware (instead of the plastic ones with cartoon characters on them) and real glasses (instead of the plastic ones that have cartoon characters on them). For a sad moment, I think she has outgrown cartoons. I wonder what I am going to watch on Saturday mornings. But then she turns on Spongebob and I relax a little.

I made the yellow card (pictured above) for her and hid it in her iCarly over-the-shoulder bookbag. She wears one of her two Beatles tops and her trademark double-pony. The top margin lists all of her favorite things right now including Kitties, The Beatles, and her latest crush, Zac Efron:


Yes, she is six. But she has been into hotties since she was one and slobbered ONLY over a picture of Tom Brady on the cover of ESPN: The Magazine. He still hangs on her wall. Rhiannon got her ears pierced last weekend, did not cry or flinch, and takes great pleasure in telling anyone who will listen that the pink stones set in silver are "October". Her green peridot will have to wait until October to replace the pink ones now in holding the piercings open.

I have never taken a look at whom Rhiannon shares her birthday with, and of the hundred or so famous people I could find on various Internet lists, I was able to cherry-pick some truly notable figures, sorting them into a truly polarized list. There really is no in between here. So one list is for "suck" and the other is for "rad". Each list is ordered from small to big, least sucky to most sucky, least rad to OG (that's "Original Gangsta" to those of you scoring at home).

Sucky (least to greatest)

Fred Durst, lead hooligan in Limp Bizkit
Slobodan Milocevic, 1st Premier of Serbia, monster
Al Roker, annoying TV weather "personality"


Rad (least bogus to teh awsum)

Benjamin Harrison, 23rd US President
Robert Plant, lead singer for Led Zeppelin
Isaac Hayes, Chef in South Park (among other things)
H.P. Lovecraft


And...Demi Lovatto (the KEWLEST, according to Rhiannon). Demi is 17 today and gave Rhiannon her first "rock" concert experience.

Tonight we went to Chuck E. Cheese for Rhiannon's on-the-day birthday dinner. We met her friends Kwynn and Riley, ordered pizzas and all-you-can-drink soda (it is no longer "pop" in Arizona as it was in Wisconsin). We also split 150 game tokens which were fed into child-sized one-armed bandits at a rate I haven't seen since the slots were loosened on the Casino Queen outside of St. Louis.

I have been to worse Chuck E. Cheese's. My worst experience was my first one back in the early 1980s, too old to stare in wonder, gobsmacked at animatronic, bepizzad rodentry, to young to sneak out for a smoke, and too poor in quarters to blow the wad on an infinite game of Moon Patrol. The whole place was bowling alley chic, and every one of the children chained to the arcade machines looked wan and haggard like the kids I've seen pictured in the textile mills of 19th century England.

Tonight, things were less hellish, strangely subdued. The children didn't notice. Rhiannon played "squash-the-spider" a lot, a game where the child must physically stomp on illuminated spiders which then make a splatting sound not conducive to post-game pizza munching. Half of the gaming hall was lit as if we were actually playing games outside, while the other have was shrouded in darkness, the hulking animatronic shapes giving me flashbacks to when Kiss were exploring the haunted amusement park in their first ever TV special. The staff were conspicuously absent excepting the thin, troubled girl at the velvet rope waiting for other children to arrive. I'm not kidding. There is a gate to get into Chuck E. Cheese. I half-expected other costumed mascots to arrive, push through the line, and get invited in, even if their names were not on the list.

The children played, gathering meager amounts of tickets from scoring tens of points in skee-ball, stomping on three out of forty spiders, tossing tokens into the machine at exactly the wrong time to get two tickets instead of 100. Between the three girls after 90 minutes of play, they split the booty like good pirates and lay seige to the prize counter.

Anyone who has ever been to one of these places knows that small children, given a certain amount of tickets to spend, will spend hours poring over the plastic prizes under glass as if they were in Tiffany's choosing diamond solitaire jewelry to wear to the Oscar's. The help behind the counter know this, and it's amazing how patient they can be as the kids negotiate:

"I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS SPIDER RING IS 10 TICKETS! I THINK IT IS FROM THE 5-TICKET BASKET!"

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME? 100 TICKETS FOR FAKE PUKE? I CAN GET THE REAL THING FOR FREE!"

We are haggling for loose goods in New Amsterdam. We are bartering for camels in Cairo. This six-year-old blondies are like a gaggle of giagias in the vegetable market in Argos, bickering until the man behind the table raises his hands and lets them take just so he won't get hurt. Or cursed. These girls know what they're doing. If I ever get a book or movie contract, or buy a house, I want these three girls on my team with Rhiannon as the closer. The bank will be paying ME to take the house of its hands.

Rhiannon gets a silver, plastic ring with pink stone and secret compartment which she will no doubt later use to stash unrefined sugar for consumption at school, a blue, beaded bracelet, and a packet of Pop-Rocks, that lovely, explosive candy from which sprang the urban myth that if you ate a packet of Pop-Rocks and drank a can of Coke that your stomach would explode and kill your 12-year-old ass. I remember once watching a friend take a dare to do it and none of us stopped him from making the attempt. The coolness of his imminent explosive departure to the post-Texas hereafter far outweighed any concerns of ours that we were about to lose a friend. Sometimes life is like that.

Pop-Rocks crackled merrily like an L.A. county wildfire in Rhiannon's mouth as we drove home. She and Kwynn had gotten into a fight where Kwynn lightly butted Rhiannon's head, forcing her out of the picture snapped in the automated picture booth. Rhiannon was shocked and cried. Kwynn would not apologize. They stood apart, each waiting for the other to do something, to blink, a Cuban Missile Crisis in the making. Eventually the tension eased. Their friendship is a strong one and, once armed with cheap loot and sated with pizza, they had the hazy look of tired forgiveness, post-8:00 on a school night. As the song says, "she was too tired to fight about it".

Rhiannon and I sat for a photo-booth portrait, too, the results of which scared the living daylights out of Rhiannon. The photo's border reads, "My Trip to Chuck E. Cheese's", and in the picture I have become a zombie about to gain my daughter's knowledge by eating her brains:


Anytime Rhiannon is naughty, I'll threaten to show her this picture. Which will likely be never as she really is a good kid. And although six might be too old for cuteness, she'll always be cute to me. And I look forward to watching cute become beautiful over the next few years.

This is the last entry in the Cute Report of Rhiannon Reinhard. I'll likely start a new blog in a little while, but for now, it's time to go back and read this blog from the beginning and remember, tracing her cuteness back to its Wisconsin headwaters.

Thanks to the readers who followed along as Rhiannon grew from baby to toddler to little person, and as I grew, too, filling out the shape of a man by the grace of my daughter. How can someone so tiny have so much love? And every day there is more of it.

Rhiannon. Finally Cute.

Andrew (Papa)

Cute Beyond Words


I was playing around with a tool called "Wordle" yesterday that creates word collages based on the content of a blog. Naturally I thought I'd use it here. As I count down the days to Rhiannon's sixth birthday, and to the conclusion of this blog, it seemed fitting to have a retrospective of what Rhiannon is about.

Rhiannon. Cute beyond words.

Andrew (Papa)

Firebird Sweet


Like her old man, Rhiannon is spending her summer writing books. But unlike her slowpoke father, she churns out illustrated volumes at a Dickensian rate of about one per day. Illustrated. Take yesterday, for example.

Rhiannon is inspired by dance. And, with the recent death of Michael Jackson, Rhiannon has decided to create some of her own dances. She has given them names. And she has not only choreographed them, but she has also designed the outfits and costumes that should be worn by the lead dancer.

The image above is for a dance she calls, "Firebird". Now, she has seen Disney's Fantasia, and is well acquainted with the Firebird Suite of Igor Stravinksy. So she has drawn a brightly colored garment, birdlike, firelike. And when Rhiannon dances it, she flies and swoops, and then rolls around on the floor as if to put out the flames.

She has designed for other dances, too. Here they are (the spelling is her own):

Balae (ballet): pink tutu and shoes, flowers

The Flawr Garl (the flower girl): pink dress with hearts of many colors. Strangely, there are no flowers.

Mad Hatr (Mad Hatter): blue mini with brown fortune cookie and a black, stovepipe hat

Emma's Hat (Emma's Hat -- Rhiannon did use the apostrophe correctly on her own): pink mini with flower, red flip-flops, tiny black hat

Hap Tenn Hap (unknown) -- orange dress, blue detail, with red boots

The Heree (the hairy) -- gray wolf suit with peace medallion on a chain, bunny slippers

Lola's Dress (Lola's Dress) -- flowing, blue gown with pink heart, Ariel wig

The Ha Garl (The "Hey, Girl!") -- B-girl outfit with red mini and half-top

Ha You (Hey, You!) -- flowing, dark-blue gown with purple top and red pumps

Pajama's Garl (Pajamas Girl) -- pink nightgown with brown spots and teddy bear accessory

HSM (High School Musical) -- red cheerleading outfit with pom-pons

The Scarcroe (The Scarecrow) -- brown scarecrow costume with straw wig and yellow shoes

Wicid (Wicked) -- multicolor witch outfit from the eponymous musical

The Tea Garl (The Tea Girl) -- pink, Chinese dress with big, red buttons and black wig with topknot

And this one pictured below: The Love (The Love) -- red bra and panty set, red wig worn up



Rhiannon. Dressably Cute.

Andrew (Papa)

The "H" Word


Rhiannon loves language, and she especially loves that there are power-words that outweigh, outfight, outrun, and outwit anything even the most polished rhetorician can devise. Right now, her favorite power word is the "H" word. That's right. Rhiannon is a master of the rhetoric of "Ha!".

"Ha!" (always spelled with an exclamation point) trumps most, if not all, other power-words, including, "So?" (also with punctuation). An example, if you will indulge me:

Dad: That's the biggest volcano I have ever seen!

Rhiannon: So?

Dad, deflated, walks the rest of the trail in silence.

"So?" disarms the opponent and quiets him, and also implies that the opponent's statement is old news, and that, in this example, Rhiannon has in fact seen volcanoes that are much, MUCH bigger than this one, and belittles her opponents experience. It's a passive-aggressive argument ender.

But what of "Ha!"? Another example:

Dad: That's the strangest bug I've ever seen!

Rhiannon: Hunter and I saw a queen ant that had wings and was part bee and part ant and it was yellow and hideous. Ha!"

or . . .

Dad: Why don't we turn off the television and read some books?

Rhiannon: Mom said I could finish watching High Five. Ha!

In both scenarios, "Ha!" becomes synonymous with "so there!", one level above "so?" in that its aggressiveness is intended to eviscerate the opponent, completely demoralizing him while at the same time being overt in asserting dominance over the opponent. Whereas "so?" may sometimes lead to the opponent racing to qualify his statement to meet Rhiannon's approval, "Ha!" makes no bones about ending the argument.

It's the H-bomb.

Rhiannon. Rhetorically Cute.

Andrew (Papa)

I Am the Cuteness


Artwork by: "I Am the Walrus"...


...and the Eggman...


...and the, um, Hippo...


...and Pudgy Bunny...


...and this, um, "Bird"...


...featuring The BEATLES!

Today is Paul McCartney's 67th birthday. For those of you who don't know, Paul McCartney was the bass player and vocalist (one of four) for the Beatles. Rhiannon is a fan. A HUGE fan. Well, a tiny fan with big, big love for Sir Paul.

So today was kind of a national holiday (in the apartment, anyway). Rhiannon dressed in her knee-length tshirt-dress (the ladies out there will know the proper term for this garment), purple, screenprinted with large, pink polkadots, "The Beatles" in white letters (in their special font), and the Fab Four in silhouette. She then had movie day, with Magical Mystery Tour, Help, and Paul McCartney music videos playing in the background while she played with her Beatles dolls and drew Beatles drawings (some of which are pictured above).

When lunchtime rolled around, she made a point of avoiding meat. In fact, she enforced a strict, no-meat rule throughout the household. Today, everyone would go veggie. Throughout the day she snacked on carrots and olives, apples, a banana, yoghurt, peanut butter, bread, singing Beatles tunes all the while (she is not so familiar with Wings or McCartney's solo work -- for her, Sir Paul is forever 18).

For supper, I made basmati rice (her favorite) and grilled veggie kebabs (which she does not like) -- more healthy snacks for her then. Following dinner, we had cupcakes for dessert which Rhiannon and her mom made together while yours truly was slaving away in the home office, sneaking spoonfuls of chicken and sausage gumbo. Shh! Rhiannon will never be the wiser (until she reads this on her wedding day).

So the holiday draws to a close, but not before a little dialogue from earlier this evening. Rhiannon wanted to play "musical instruments" which means that we get out all of the percussion, the digiri doo, both guitars, the mandolin, and we take turns playing. Rhiannon has been sufficiently trained to not wail on the mandolin as it's a family heirloom, but she lightly strums it. She likes it because it is her size, and I have it tuned to a major chord so she can strum and sing along. As we begin, she looks at me. She's a little confused as to how to hold the instrument.

"DAD!"

"Yes, Rhiannon?"

"Is this way Paw-style?"

I think she is asking me if she is a south paw (lefty) or not.

"NO DAD! PAUL-STYLE!"

As in, is she holding the mandolin the way Sir Paul holds his Hofner bass. She's not, so she flips it around and strums that way. Rhiannon's right-handed, but it doesn't matter. For now she's in the biggest band that ever plugged in, and she's singing at the top of her lungs. "Help!"

Rhiannon. Cuter than Paul.

Andrew (Papa)

Goddess of Cute


Rhiannon and I were hiking by Piestawa Peak in northern Phoenix this afternoon. There is absolutely no cover to be found, no escape from the direct sunlight aside from what small shade our hats provided. As we walked, Rhiannon, perched atop my shoulders (she is making me *quite* fit this way), commented on the clouds to the north, thunderheads birthing in the 100+ degree heat.

"Dad!"

"Yes, Rhiannon?"

"I bet that's where the gods live."

"Where?"

"In the clouds! DUH!"

"What makes you think that?"

She sighs. "Because that's where gods live!" I half expect her to end the exclamation with "idiot", but she does not. I'm relieved. Usually daughters wait until adolescence to think their dads are idiots, and I was worried that Rhiannon was starting early.

Rhiannon continues. "I am a goddess."

I stop walking.

"It's true. Emma says that she is a goddess and that all the other girls in our class are goddesses, too. But she's wrong. I'm the only goddess there."

"Rhiannon, in order for you to be a goddess, one of your parents has to be a god."

She considers this and says, "well, I am half a goddess then, and half a person."

Well, Rhiannon thinks one of her parents is a god. I refrain from pressing the issue because it might not be either of her traditional parents, but some third divine entity.

Rhiannon continues her monologue. "I AM half a goddess."

"Which half?" I ask her, jokingly. But she is quite serious.

"My left half," she says. And she means it. "My right half always gets booboos and hurts, but my left half is always fine. So that's the goddess half."

"Alrighty then."

The case is closed. I continue walking, and she continues observing her long-lost home in the clouds, almost able to reach them from my shoulders. She resigns herself to her mortal chariot.

"Can I have some Oreos?"

Hmm. Food of the gods. "Of course." I hand some cookies up to her, and crumbs begin dusting my hat, chocolate mana from heaven.

Rhiannon. Divinely Cute.

Andrew (Papa)

(Note: The art in this post was done by my friend and colleague Bob Crumb in 2008).

$@%^#&


Rhiannon. Cursed with cuteness.

Andrew (Papa)