Daddy Scratches | Jayna: 4 years

Dear Jayna,

Chances are that one day, years from now, I’m going to walk you down an aisle and hand you off to the man with whom you’ll spend the rest of your life (provided that the man in question has passed a thorough background check), and when that day comes, I will say to that man a few words about how precious a thing to me is my daughter, and how I hope he always treats you as such—and then, in addition to handing to that man my daughter, I will hand to that man a pair of earplugs, because although he likely will know you quite well by that point, he may not know about The Screaming.

Yes, Jayna, another year has passed, but The Screaming? The Screaming remains.

What is there to be said about The Screaming that I’ve not said already? Not much … though it is worth noting that, now that you are bigger and stronger and older, so, too, is The Screaming bigger and stronger … and older. SO old. Stop it. Please.

Oh, and The Crying. My goodness, The Crying. And did I mention The Shrieking and The Whining? Because, really, they deserve to be mentioned as well, given their prominence in our family’s collective life at present.

Your mother says you’re simply “emotional.” Well, if by “emotional,” she means that you are prone to multiple mood swings per minute and are capable of becoming a scary and life-altering force of nature at the drop of a hat, then emotional you are.

In your defense, part of this, I’ve realized, has had to do with the fact that, earlier this year, we took away your pacifier. The symptoms and duration of your withdrawal have been far more pronounced and lengthy than I had anticipated … which seems rather moronic of me when one considers that you spent the first three-and-a-half years of your life believing that your pacifier was an actual part of your body, and that it’s removal, therefore, was almost as traumatic as if we had lopped off one of your hands. If I were you, I wouldn’t be over it yet, either.

And so The Screaming and The Crying and The Shrieking and The Whining have taken up residence here with us, and from the looks of things, they don’t plan on leaving anytime soon. They’ve unpacked their bags and thrown their shit all over the place, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to take an act of god to evict them.

This, of course, is a problem, my dear child, for your father has a woefully low tolerance for the unpleasant cacophony that throughout the day bursts forth from your deceptively tiny, 37-pound body. Those sounds cause me to temporarily forget how cute and lovable and sweet and funny and wonderful you are, and make me wish I could place ever so gently against the side of your neck a live stun gun with which to zap your shrill ass into a state of unconsciousness.

For the record, your Symphony of Terror is actually preferable to one of the early side effects of pacifier withdrawal, which involved you picking your own lips until they bled. Constantly. I recall fetching you from bed on a couple of mornings, and discovering as I did so that you had smeared onto one or both of your cheeks blood from your lips, and that you also had used your sheets and comforter to dab the blood from those same cracked and bleeding lips. As a parent, it’s very distressing to have to tell your only daughter to stop hurting your only daughter.

Fortunately, the lip-picking seems to have stopped, but it has been replaced by a chronic case of eczema, which is most pronounced on each of your arms, in the crook of your elbows. This flesh is now the target of your relentless scratching, sometimes to the point of bleeding. We are trying to treat the problem using an ointment recommended by your doctor, but when we try to apply said ointment to the affected area while you’re awake, you become, shall we say, noncompliant? Thus, our treatment is limited to me smearing the stuff onto your arms while you’re asleep.

Most tellingly, you have, on more than one occasion, said to your mother and I with true sorrow in your voice, “Mommy/Daddy, I miss pahpiece,” (which, as noted elsewhere, is what you called your beloved rubber mouth-plug). It has been a few weeks since I last heard you utter that sentence, however, so we may actually be almost out of the woods.

One last thing about the whole pahpiece debacle that warrants mentioning: much to my surprise, the gaping hole that your teeth had created in order to accommodate your constant pacifier sucking? It has disappeared, just as the dentist had said it would … and I’m fairly stunned, because when he offered up that prediction, I was tempted to ask him where he kept his crack pipe.

By now, your mother is rolling her eyes as she reads this, because she dislikes it greatly when I dwell on the negative aspects of our little angels, but part of my motivation for writing these letters is to document just what you were like at the time they were written … and marking your 4th birthday by authoring a letter in which I fail to include everything noted above would be like teaching American history and skipping the part about that whole Revolutionary War thing.

Lest there be any confusion, rest assured that I adore you. You are, without a doubt, the cutest, most adorable, most lovable little thing I’ve ever encountered in my entire life. As I often tell you, my love for you is bigger than the whole universe. Whenever the day comes that you decide you are too big to climb into my lap and wrap your whole body around me so that you can give me the biggest hug ever, my heart will break a little.

Lately, you have been coming into my office when I have music playing, and you ask me to get up and dance with you. I comply, because you are adorable, and I am a total pushover. You then call out the moves you’d like me to bust with you, which include the “Mix It Up” (a sort of air butter-churning), the “Leapfrog” (hopping in place on all fours), the “Donkey Kick” (modified “Leapfrog,” during which the hands remain on the floor while the legs kick up in the air), the “Spin Around” (self explanatory) the “Chicken” (flap your elbows) and the “Baby Bird” (flap your hands with your elbows bent and arms tight against your body). I believe our invitation for the next season of “Dancing with the Stars” is in the mail.

Of course, no birthday letter would be complete without a look at your annual celebration (which took place way back on July 12th, and I’d have written this letter long before now had it not been for the convergence of our vacation, which I’ll soon write about, and The Great Computer Meltdown of 2009, which I’ve written about ad nauseam).

For this year’s event, you chose to have a “Wizard of Oz”-themed “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” party … and never mind that you’ve never actually seen “The Wizard of Oz.”

As usual, Mommy did a spectacular job of decorating, and even managed to create a rainbow through which the guests entered the party.

She did this by taping colorful streamers to the edge of our carport.

Yes, I said “our carport.” You know, because we live in Southern California … in the ’70s. Yeah, the Brady Bunch lives across the street, and The Partridge Family is right next door.

(Hey, listen, it was there when we bought the place, and it keeps my car clean.)

The whole “rainbow” thing was impressive enough, but Mommy also got Dorothy and The Tin Man to show up.

(Let it not be said that your Uncle Jason and his girlfriend Seanna aren’t good sports. P.S.: No, that’s not her real hair, people.)

Hey, wait, I forgot; how old are you again?

Ah, that’s right. Thanks for clearing that up.

So here’s the deal, my emotional little dynamo: Daddy loves you. Like crazy. And I can’t believe you’re growing up so fast. I know it’s a futile request, but I’ll make it anyway: slow down, please, would you?