playing
Playing and Building
Afternoon Playing
Afternoon Playing, a set on Flickr.
We set the camera up and let the pictures tell the story.
Via Flickr:
The Girl and I spend a day out of school together.
Helping
One of the reasons I so like taking L to the park is the adventure she has meeting new people. She always makes a new friend -- though they seldom even learn their names -- and sharpens her social skills.
The Battle
The warrior comes, a vicious flanking surprise attack with that most feared weapon: the broom.
A fierce battle ensues: experience versus speed, Swiffer Sweeper versus broom.
If only all of our battles were so fun.
And surely, I’ll look back at the epic bedtime battles, the fussy mornings, the frustrated afternoons, and I’ll wish our current battles could return.
The Queen’s Prisoner
Once upon a time, there was a terrible, wicked queen. As a prisoner, she held a poor girl from a small, humble village. She fed the girl daily, played with her, took her to school, and inflicted other tortures too sadistic to mention here among polite company.
She was especially fond of binding the young girl’s wrists with Mardi Gras beads and flinging the poor, frightened girl onto the couch.
How those binds tore at the little girl’s flesh! But tight as the queen made the beads, she could not break her little prisoner’s spirit.
Her little captive still had the ability to melt hearts and frustrate daddies in an instant.
When is working not working?
When it’s playing.
Sanding
The Girl has been asking for a sandbox for weeks, though she hasn't done so in as many words. Instead, she's been playing in whatever dirt she can find, taking her beach toys out to the patch of driveway that is unpaved and playing in the dirt there as if it were sand. She has taken Baby out and made dirt angels; she has created vast mountain ranges only to demolish them with both feet; and she has sprinkled dirt all over her legs until she was a dusty mess.
This week, Papa and I decided it was time to make a proper sandbox, complete with a mesh cover to discourage local cats from turning it into an enormous litter box.
"Why don't you just go buy one of those turtle sandboxes with the lid?" Nana asked, knowing perfectly well that it was out of the question: a man must build his daughter's sandbox, not purchase it at some chain store.
No, a father and grandfather must pull out every power tool available -- yes, even the router -- to create a mishmash masterpiece.
But that's only the smallest portion of the fun.
There’s a Doctor in Our House
We took L to the doctor today: a lingering, stubborn cough that has persisted through a round of antibiotics, Benadryl, and Musinex. A quick check and another round of antibiotics.
But suddenly we have a doctor in the house. K and I have both received several checkups. It's obvious L was paying close attention to what the doctor was doing: L runs her makeshift thermometer over our forehead and down one cheek. She puts her stethoscope on our chest then on our back and asks us to breathe deeply. Warning, "This might hurt," then whispering the instructions to cry afterward, she plunges a syringe into our arm and clamps a plastic bandage on it.
"You'll be alright," she soothes.
Let’s Go Fly A Kite
March is a month for kite flying. Though I rarely flew kites, it was always a favorite pastime for me as a kid. Perhaps it's the indirect flying. We introduced kite flying to the Girl this weekend, much to her excitement.
When shopping for our kite, there was only one criterion: there must be a princess on it.
"I'm not a _____! I'm a princess!" L is fond of saying these days. In the blank can be just about anything, even "little girl" (or "big girl" for that matter). Once the princess kite was assembled
and launched, L was fascinated.
For about three minutes.
Much more inviting were the rocks and twigs scattered about.