Much like yesterday, today had something for everyone - though occasionally I wished that "everyone" had been someone else:
- Early-ish wakeups for everyone, again.
- A big meltdown by Julia after breakfast.
- Genevieve taking a 20-minute morning nap.
- A fun trip to the park and campus, with Julia in the bike trailer and the other girls going by car.
- Managing another massive meltdown from Julia when I had to cut short a trike "ride" that had devolved into her sititng on the immobile trike and begging me to push it even though I was already shepherding Genevieve along the sidewalk behind her walker.
- Very early lunches and naps for the girls.
- A long and too-hard rollerski workout that had me seeing stars after overexerting in the heat.
- Narrowly avoiding another big meltdown by taking the two girls to the playground at Menards while Shannon napped.
- Trying to explain to Julia an NPR story in which a writer described how she didn't cry when she went to kindergarten, and getting choked up when I said that some kids miss their moms and dads at school. (When I said this, she replied, "I won't cry, because I will love all the books at preschool!")
- Watching, at Menards, a man wearing a "World's Greatest Dad" t-shirt merely stare and keep talking on his cellphone while his five-year-old daughter first put her head entirely inside a plastic shopping bag, cinching the ties around her neck, and (after removing the bag) then pull his overloaded cart backwards into a display of paint cans, nearly squashing herself.
- Coming home to have a fantastic dinner at which everyone was very well behaved.
- Cutting Genevieve's bath short when she pooped and pooped and kept pooping in the tub.
- Giving Julia a good bath, and cracking up at all her silliness.
- Going to Genevieve when she protested bedtime with unusually bad crying, singing her a song, and having Julia barge in, eyes wide, to show me a picture in a Richard Scarry book of a policeman, whom she immediately mapped into a blues song ("John Hardy") I'd stupidly played for her the other day. (Damn you, Dan Zanes!) "That's the powiceman who took Johh Hardy by the arm!"
- Reading Julia a couple stories before bed and having her turn to me and say, with utmost sincerity, "I sure love you, Daddy."
- Enjoying an unusually long evening - to which I now return.