Yesterday was my day with Cailyn. Well, and with Mom. Chris went back to Bay City and Nathan was working and April was in clinicals, so I got to be the designated baby sitter for the day. And it was quite an experience, I might add. Wild and random games and comments, and all before 9:30 in the morning. A time or two I wondered if I would be able to make it until Chris got home. Check out some of the highlights.
We started the day outside. Not that unusual. Cailyn loves running barefoot through the grass, smelling the flowers, and searching for bugs. Hey, two out of three girly things is not bad when you're just three years old. Suddenly she plopped down onto the grass and patted the spot next to her, saying, "Sit here, DadDad." Of course I complied. Pensively she looked up at me and said, "DadDad, you know what? There was no phone and there was no computer and there was no TV when my Daddy was a little boy."
"Oh, really?" I replied.
"Yes," she assured me, "and now he's a big boy."
Hmm. I was there and I certainly don't remember any such abuse, although I do remember not having a computer when I was a boy. I remember when the telephone was wired to the wall, too, and when the TV had no colors except black and white and shades of gray.
I think she was getting hungry when she picked one of the thousands of periwinkle flowers and again invited me to sit down with her, this time in the driveway. Apparently she was going to prepare a salad. She pulled out the old set of keys we have for her to play with, and they became instead a set of Ginsu knives. She used them to carefully slice the flower into tiny, bite-sized pieces, saying, "Look DadDad. These are our vegetables." Dollar grass became the greens, and the flowering part of dollar grass that looks like broccoli became, well, broccoli. Voila … Periwinkle salad.
I got a little worried when she shifted her attention to snails. I didn't want any of them in my salad. But as it turned out she was just concerned about their well-being. We have thousands of snails in the various flower beds around the house. Occasionally we send them on secret missions or even vacations into the middle of the street. Other times we pretend we are on a cruise ship and offer them buffets of all they can eat snail bait. Yesterday, though, she was in that thoughtful mood. "DadDad," she noted, "see that snail right there? Right there. That one, see it? See it?" Obviously I wasn't moving fast enough. The snail was racing from my field of vision before I could focus. I did finally locate the exact one she meant, off by itself near the oleander bush. "Yes, DadDad. That's the one. He needs a brother. Can you give him a brother?" I plucked another one from nearby and placed it next to the lonely critter. Her "Thank you, DadDad" was accompanied by a clearly audible sigh. Mine, not hers. Why is it that in her world pretty much every bug is a guy, save for the occasional Mommy doodle bug? Is that some inherent female thing, to see insects as guys … and perhaps the other way around? Surely not.
For me the highlight of the day was our trip to the Ball. That started out when we headed upstairs on the deck. Fritz and Heidi dutifully followed. Faced with that large empty space – a veritable blank canvas for our little artist – Cailyn almost immediately began spinning around and around in circles. "I doing my ballerina dance at the Ball, DadDad." I was content to watch her and bask in the delight on her face. But that didn't last long. A new idea struck her, and she stopped dead in her tracks. "Dance with me, DadDad," was her pleas, with arms outstretched, head tilted, and a coy grin on her face. Now how could a grandfather refuse an offer like that? I took her hands and she began to spin again, this time leaning back as far as she could, trusting me to hold her up, shaking her head from side to side, tossing her hair in the wind. Where did she learn this stuff, anyway? My guess was a Disney princess movie, but I was never awake for the ballroom scenes so I can't be sure. We got tickled when we noticed Fritz trying to get Heidi to dance with him. He crouched low before her and barked his intentions. She crouched back – as much as a dachshund can crouch – and the two of then frolicked around the deck as well. It truly was a ballroom. And who needed music anyway? We all had something going on in our heads. The reverie continued until Fritz decided he wanted to cut in on us and dance with Cailyn. He jumped up onto her every time she spun in his direction. And she laughed. And the unrestrained laughter of a three year old girl playing out her ballroom fantasies as a princess simply cannot be surpassed.
1 Peter 4:1-2 says, "Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin. As a result, he does not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God."
Father, I sure missed Chris yesterday. Thank you for taking the sting out by giving Cailyn and Mom and I such a peaceful day. Amen.
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