Sorry kid, it's a re-run

Evelyn is watching a rerun and she doesn’t even know it.

At the end of this month Bridget turns 3. At the beginning of next month Evelyn turns 1. Evelyn’s first year has been very busy for all of us. Shortly after she was born, Mom found a job on the other side of the country. We had a house hunting trip when Evelyn was 7 weeks old, and we moved when she was nearly 3 months. At 5 months of age her Mom returned to work, and Dad was the full time parent at home with Evelyn and her sister.

Bridget’s first year was a non-maelstrom of inactivity by comparison. She benefited from routine, better cooking, and significantly less divided attention from at least one parent at a time. Her first year was very well documented. It was photographed, scrap-booked, emailed, logged, and video taped. By the time Bridget was 18 months old Daddy’s Workshop had produced a two hour home movie, complete with special effects. Not just once, but three times.

We’ve had slightly less time to document Evelyn’s first year, what with the chaotic upheaval and all.

The videos and photos are all there, just waiting to be edited, compiled, glued and glittered into scrapbooks and movies.

We played one of the old home movies the other day – the second one, where Bridget was the same age as Evelyn is now. Evelyn was amazed. Awestruck, even. There it was, right before her eyes. Video evidence of a life she could not remember living. The TV baby looked like her, sounded like her, and wore many of her clothes – although for some reason they looked a little newer. And that was definitely Mommy and Daddy with her on the TV. Yet, for some reason, she could not recall ever being able to walk; or having a dog; or playing outside with no coat and hat on. Clearly, she thought she was watching herself on TV. And she loved it. She couldn’t get enough of seeing her doppelganger sister on the tube.

It was like a baby’s dream come true – out of the same screen that gives her Elmo and Teletubbies…there she was, right where they had been. And oh! The things she could do on this show, where there was no big sister stealing her toys and yelling at her! She was so enraptured that we let her watch it a few more times during the rest of the week.

Eventually we felt guilty and put it back on the shelf, but we never had the heart to tell her that it was a re-run, or that she had been played by a stand-in body double stunt baby. It’s completely obvious what we have to do next. We have to lie.

Since we may never have enough consecutive hours of REM sleep to be that creative again, we need a ruse. We have to come up with an elaborate web of lies that will “explain” everything to her. The secret will go with us to our graves, unless Google starts providing search capabilities on Blog contents. We need a grand story, one so outrageous that would seem that we couldn’t have made it up. Something like: Aliens abducted the dog and replaced him with a big sister/spy to monitor our activities. We had caught the whole thing on tape, but their anti-paparazzi ray-gun zapped it. That’s why we had to stop making home movies, the camera is completely zapped. That’s why we decided to move to the East Coast where there are far fewer UFO sightings. Coincidentally enough, there are also far fewer people using recreational hallucinogens on the East Coast.

Or perhaps this: it was a Hallmark Movie of the Week. You were the star – a highly paid child actor. Unfortunately we blew all the proceeds on fast cars and fast food, and after you grew out of your “cute when you fall down learning to walk” phase there were no more movie parts coming your way.

We could always fall back on the old stand bys used by our parent’s generation such as “because I said so” or “because you were making too much noise, that’s why”.

We’ll likely just cave and tell her the real truth though – that we moved across country in order to have a nicer home and spend more time together as a family, and the first chance I get, I’ll make more home movies. Right after spring cleaning; garden planting; housework; painting the exterior trim; painting the bedrooms; replacing some old windows; cleaning the basement; and getting used to being back at work full time.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.