Big Piñata's House

Mac Compatible, unless it's before a nap

George lately mentions someone called Big Piñata. Big Piñata is a monster, I think, who George talks about when he gets frustrated or pissed off about something. If he can't get the straw in his juice box, he says something like, "this is Big Piñata's," and then throws it on the floor. This afternoon we drove to Tahoe. It was a bit past his nap time, so I wasn't surprised to turn back and see him conked out a couple minutes after he told me he hated the song I was playing, and that I need to go to Big Piñata's house.

Kiki rode up with my dad, and they chatted the entire ride. I'm sure she had three hundred questions for him. She is in the textbook "why" stage. Anyone she talks with, she starts in on the questions. When we left the gym the other week, she walked up to an interesting looking guy. He was a big man on a motorized scooter, smiling broadly, radiating happiness. His scooter had an umbrella on it, and I knew Kiki would be compelled to talk with this man. She ran ahead of me, and started in on the umbrella; where did he get it, why does it have palm trees on it, what does he need an umbrella for. She moved onto talk about his scooter, and I just stood behind awkwardly smiling, as George was unraveling into a 5pm get-me-home-now meltdown. 

The man was just as happy to talk with Kiki as she was to talk with him. Eventually, I had to tell her we need to go because the two of them could have easily carried on talking, oblivious to the rest of the world. As we walked away, the man told me she is an "Indigo Child" and to look it up. He said she's very special, and he was just like her as a child.

I went home and Googled Indigo Children, of course, and it did sound a lot like her, however, the description of Indigo Children is criticized as having a Forer Effect, like astrological signs, where descriptions can fit anyone. So, I'm not too sure if "Indigo Child" is just a nice way of saying, you're kid acts a little weird and it's cool. 

The description says they have innate spirituality. Since last year, she has been very concerned with death. She likes to talk about when people die and how they die. She is very interested in my grandparents, and their parents. I almost started to cry the other night when I was laying with her at bedtime, and she told me, "I have dreams Grandma Dee hugs me." Kiki never met my Grandma Dee, but they'd have gotten on like a house on fire.

Last week her dad was reading her Bambi, and I heard her crying hysterically. I walked to her room, and she looked at me, sobbing, and said, "Bambi's mom is shot, and dead!"

Again, I wanted to cry. I gave her a hug, and agreed it was very sad. After she calmed down, she had many questions about guns, and if Bambi's mom had a hole in her fur, if his dad took care of him. Such bad bedtime conversation, although I don't know how much better it'd be over breakfast. I hadn't seen Bambi since I was her age, so when I read this story to her, I was surprised to find out Bambi was a boy, I thought all the characters were girls my entire life.

It's scary that Kiki is so outgoing, and I always have to watch her. The other day the dog ran across the street to see a neighbor's dog, and she followed the dog right into their house. Her dad walked in and got her, and then we had to talk to her for fifteen minutes about how she can't go into people's houses, go up to people's cars, or walk off from us. She seemed to understand, but it's hard to tell because when she is listening hard to something she tends to stare off, over in the distance. 

We don't "know" any of our neighbors, so I would never let her go over to their house without me. The house she went over to is a nice family, where the older kids are early twenty somethings who party a lot, but they helped my mom out one time when she was watching the kids, so I am pretty sure they're not murderers.

Last month, one of these hard partying twenty-somethings walked to his truck parked in front of our house. He was talking with his friend, and said, "I met the hottest black girl."

My daughter ran up to him immediately, completely astonished, and she asked, "You met a black bear?"

This made the two guys laugh and they said, "yes," and then got in their car as she shouted warnings to them about bears, and how baby bears are so cute.

It seemed her preschool spent six months talking about how people are different but the same. At her end-of-year concert I finally understood why she kept asking me if she was Chinese and South African because they sang a song called "Under One Sky" where the chorus is, We're American, were Russian, we're Israeli, we're Egyptian, too. We're Mexican, South African, we're Irish and we're Chinese.

They talked a lot about skin color, and how some people are black, brown, pink and orange. She'd ask what's my skin color, and how about other people's. Then George would start in on it, and I'd get a tinge worried we'd be out and the kids would start loudly pointing out all the different races. They never did, and the times they've asked, it was muffled by the excitement. A great safety mechanism about what young kids say, is that often times people don't know what they say the first time around.

I could just let them be heard, and then say something inline with their preschool curriculum, like, "Were all together under one sun," or "Just like you and me, were all different, and were all the same." Or I could not let them say it the second, clarifying, time and just point off into the distance and scream "Big Piñata!" George will scream and climb up my body like a bear climbing a tree, and Kiki's jaw will drop. 

Tomorrow I'm going to get more information on Big Piñata. If there is going to be the looming threat that I have to go to his house, I need to learn a lot more about him first.