Sorry to anyone who was confused by yesterday's post, as it was a repeat. Some things got mixed up both in my head and on the Internet. Not the first time, won't be the last. The kid and I are still plugging along here, trying to get used to a new routine in our post- nap car seat lives and playing our new favorite game- you know, the one where I sit here while she walks around the house collecting random objects and handing them to me. Like a letter 'P' refrigerator magnet, a stuffed bunny and a pink rubber seal bath toy, which I am holding as I type this. At first I thought I was supposed to play with this stuff, but now I am pretty sure I am supposed to just hold them until she comes back to re-claim them. There are also objects placed in other random areas of the house, like under the cat post.
Another new game she loves is handing me the plastic bath toys so that I can squeeze them and blow air, or sometimes old bath water, in to her face. She thinks this is hysterical. By the way, I have now been joined by the letter 'Q', some socks that she pulled out of the clean laundry basket (my fault for not putting them away fast enough) and a DVD copy of The Big Lebowski. It is getting hard to type.
Even though it has been well over a year, there are still certain moments every day where the reality that I am a dad hits me out of nowhere. Yesterday, it was when we were walking from the car to the playground. I had a banana sticking out of my coat pocket, a pink rain coat over my shoulder and a large rubber fish sticking out of the other pocket. Cool. It actually feels like this happened about three weeks ago since it is f-ing snowing outside today, but yesterday was about 60 degrees so we were actually able to go out.
We got to the park first thing , about 8:30 a.m., which was perfect because we were the only people there. She had free reign of the whole place and I didn't have to worry about any awkward interaction with other parents. Of course, she chose to spend the first 20 minutes hitting a bench with a stick and laughing, but eventually she got around to swinging and going down the slide. As is the case with most kids, she doesn't have much of an attention span, so swinging is kind of a futile activity. Sure, she enjoys it, but after about five minutes she is pretty much done. She likes the slide, but she likes it a lot better when I put her on my lap and slide down with her, as opposed to just holding her on the side and letting her slide down herself.
It was at about the third trip down the slide that I really started to realize how old I am getting. I am kind of a big dude as it is, so climbing up playground equipment designed for 5-year-olds isn't exactly easy for me, but I definitely remember a point in my life, a recent point, where I was much more nimble. Maybe it is the fact that I essentially carry around a moving, talking 25 pound weight all day long, but my muscles are way to sore to do this sort of thing.
On a side note, has anyone been down a playground slide recently? What the hell is with all of the static electricity? I thought we were going to spontaneously combust.
Along with the slide I was also forced to climb through tubes, crawl under some apparatus and hold her over my head while she grabbed on to the monkey bars. I feel this morning like I spent all of yesterday at the gym. Which is actually good, since I haven't set foot on a gym since at least 2006.
Our dream day at the park was going pretty well for a few hours but eventually, as I knew would happen, some other people started to show up. First, an Irish woman, who I am pretty sure was a nanny, arrived with three boys, probably like 3, 2 and under a year old. Now, due to her inherited social awkwardness (that comes from me) and her lack of experience dealing with people, Av tends to be very uncomfortable around other kids. She wants to play with them, bad, but she can't really speak to them and she doesn't know how to approach them, so she just follows them around and when she can, she gets real close to them and touches them. In a way I kind of feel bad for her, but at the same time, when she has a chance to play with them she doesn't really do anything anyway. I think she just needs to get a little bit older.
This situation was made funny by the fact that she was very clearly interested in playing with one of the kids, the middle boy, and she decided she was going to do the creep follow. He and the nanny were playing on the slide, so she stood at the bottom of the steps and waited for him to walk over, then she would look at him, get shy and then point and laugh as he went down the slide again. Eventually she got up the nerve to get close to him, at which point she grabbed his Transformer sneaker since, you know, she has no concept of personal space. It was at this point that the nanny said 'do you want to play with the little girl, Liam?' and we both realized from his surprised face and red cheeks that he thought Av was a boy. In his defense, she was dressed kind of boyish, wearing jeans, blue sneakers and a brown sweat shirt with a dinosaur on it. The funny part was that as soon as Liam found this out, he wouldn't even go near the stairs to the slide, let alone the baby because, as the nanny told me, he is 'terrified of girls.'
I kind of felt bad because Av really ruined this kid's day. He wouldn't go down the slide if he knew she was around, or watching or anything. Poor kid. He should probably learn to get over that, though, unless he wants to grow up getting his ass kicked by his two brothers- and probably a bunch of girls, too. Av quickly got over her little crush, probably when she realized the kid was a pansy, and moved on to picking up rocks and putting them on top of the picnic tables next to the playground. Another kid showed up with his grandmother and Av briefly explored the possibility of playing with him, but didn't seem too interested, so we left.
We got home and I put Av down for a nap. As I was walking out of her room I realized that my coat was covered in banana so I took it off and cleaned out the pockets so I could wash it in the next load of laundry. What I found was a banana peel, a stick, a bunch of Cheerios and some dumb plastic toy she probably refused to leave the house without one day. The only thing in that coat that was mine was a pen. Ahh, another Dad moment. I have already conceded to devoting part of my Saturday to cleaning the inside of my car. I can only imagine what I am going to find when I do that. This coming from a person who used to clean his dashboard with a Q-tip and specifically stop just to throw away trash in lieu of leaving it in the car. I had, without question, the cleanest car in America. Yes, fatherhood does change you.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I am having a problem juggling the typing with the three wooden blocks, stuffed duck and plastic sheep that I am holding, so I'll be signing off now.
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