Best Father's Day Ever

I feel like I might need some intravenous caffeine to make it through the next couple hours, but my goodness what a great Father's Day.

The girls were in great moods all day (excepting a few par-for-the-course meltdowns from Vivi), and we did a whole bunch of fun things: several long walks, flying kites and climbing trees in the backyard (no kidding!), good gifts, a pizza dinner with friends, and so forth. (I snuck a good workout in during the super-sized naps.)

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Julia, nearly sixteen inches off the ground.

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Vivi, peeking under the sunglasses at her own reflection in mine.

Julia wished me a happy father's day roughly fifty times, and even Vivi - not a big one for the kiss-and-hug routine - laid a lotta love on me, especially on a long walk which filled pretty much the whole time between between afternoon snacks and dinner. The girls were literally staggering at the end of the trek - the perfect state for a big dinner of square-cut pizza.

All those events were excellent, of course, but the high point of the day came at the very end. After weeks of resisting Vivi's "Boo-ah, bee?" pleas, Julia has suddenly decided to "read" Vivi's favorite bedtime stories to her and, on top of that, to sing Barney's (in)famous "I Love You" song as Vivi's "night-night" song. Needless to say, Genevieve loves all this: she sits next to Julia, beaming like she just won the toddler lottery, until the end of the song - "With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you/Won't you say you love me too?" - when they hug and kiss. Tonight's routine was especially satisfying, of course, since it was pretty much the best possible thing a father could see.

Forecast: Significant blowing and drifting, with the possibility of heavy accumulation in rural areas.