I'm back from the great north, fresh with a wicked sunburn and a few mosquito bites. I can't thank Jen enough for letting me off the parental hook for a couple days, and yet I'm chewing my nails at the thought of how she'll cash in on the favor. I think she's ahead in the "watching the girls" scoreboard.
Some parents keep score, and the rest lie about keeping score. We don't keep score, and yet I have, hidden in my semi-conscious mind, a little clicker-counter that is ever watchful of the times when I watch the kids for Jen. As has been pointed out to me on some occassions, this counter tends to not be so fastidious when it comes to the times that Jen watches the kids for me. How subtly does the mind work such trickery.
I missed the girls a lot, all three of them. There was no fairer sound for me than when I got out of the car this afternoon, started unloading the trunk, and heard Lily screech in delight from the stoop, where Jen had opened the door to greet me. Coming home now means something different to me; different than when we were pre-kids, and different than when they were just two swaddled little raisins. I am eager every day to hear that Lily "Aaaaaiiiiiiiiiiieeeieighhhhschk!!!" rend the afternoon air, followed in due course by Abby's "rreeeeeeeeaaaacccckkgh" that sounds so astoundingly dolphin-esque, you might swear you were lolling about in the Pacific.
Here is Today's Moment of Hilarity: I had fetched myself a pint of water after I got home, and it took the girls no time to pry it from me so they could drink from it (I made the mistake of thinking we could all share. So, they both took a sip, and I raised it to my face, where I could see about 12 million peanut-butter cracker particulates floating about in my water. Never share water with a toddler; it's disgusting.) So, they both took turns slaking their thirst with my hard-gotten water. They love drinking big-people glasses, and it's good practice, so I let them do it with my guidance.
Lily decided today to try and go solo, and curiousity got the better of me, so I let her take the entire pint glass (half full) and see what she would do. She brought it up. It tilted. Her face was nowhere near it. She poured it all over herself, reminiscent of Jennifer Beals in "Flashdance". We (wisely) surpressed our initial reaction - laughter - and just kept looking at her blankly to see what she would do. She stared back and forth at both of us with a goofy non-smile, waiting to see how we would react. It was, for a good 8 seconds, a sort of "reaction stand off", which she finally broke by letting out an enormous, "Aaaahhhhh!"
This will go down as one of my favorite moments of hers to date.
Day one hundred and sixty one.
Thanks Marj for coming down to help, unasked for and amazingly appreciated. Thanks to Jen for blog duty, and for taking really great photos of the girls swinging, which I will continue putting up right now.
Lily, the sunscreen goddess.
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