"Alice Blue Gown"

Historical factoid: this song refers to the preponderance of a particular color blue in the wardrobe of then-contemporary, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of Teddy Roosevelt. I always thought it had something to do with 'Alice in Wonderland', the Disney movie. This version of the song has very odd harmonies, and works a little better without the piano part. But, alas, only a little better. No need to keep this one in the Big Book of Bardic Crap.

I think we might be entering a bit of a lull in my daughter's life, in the sense that the battles we have with her will be a bit less pitched and heated for a few years. I hope that I'm not just dreaming this, but it is the appropriate time for this mythical and much awaited 'pre-puberty' break. She seems to be generally polite--more with others than with us, as could be expected--affectionate, creative, thoughtful, curious about the world. All good and proper things for this stage of her life.

I'm increasingly aware of how difficult it is to be a parent even now, how my job is to continually set the bar higher and higher for her. 'Ok, that's fine, but now you have to do *this*': *this* being always more difficult and detailed. Since our job is to make her into a reasonably well-behaved, competent member of society at large, we can never afford to rest on our laurels, there is always way too much information that needs to be imparted.

It's good to be aware of our job. It will still be heart-breaking when she screams endlessly at us in her adolescent years, but we will know, at the least, that we've laid a good foundation for her, that she will know the basic rules and regulations. She will be as fully conscious as is possible when she chooses to set them all aside, discovering her own unique and unmapped gifts.