Day Two

I got a lucky break overnight, when I confirmed LuLu's claim that MPS had the day off for the holiday weekend. That led directly to break #2. The kids slept straight through until 10:45, nearly four hours later than their biological clocks usually allow. Hot damn!

You'd think that would lead to a great day, but you'd be wrong. Oh, 81% of it was very nice. Another 10% was good, but the remaining 9% was consumed by constant bickering between the girls and by about a half dozen fits by Lu.

Whew.

Once they woke up I gave them breakfast. Only Ms. Lu didn't want what I offered and opted for Rice Krispies. Cue the first fit. The bowl wasn't clean enough (it was) the spoon wasn't clean (it was) the replacement spoon was the same one and I was tricking her (I wasn't). Each time she'd squeal and stomp her feet and grimace and yell "Dadddddy!". To finish it off she said they were generic Rice Krispies and she only wanted the real thing and I should go get her some.

So bleep it. I took her bowl and dumped the cereal into the toilet, and YaYa and I sat down to enjoy our food while LuLu pouted.

Whew.

After breakfast I put on the Ghostbusters II DVD and selected the animated episodes that were included with the disc. I noticed the first one was written by J. Michael Straczynski, later the creator of Babylon 5. The kids loved the episodes and were spellbound.

Then YaYa had a small fit about leaving the house. 100,000 times we've had this debate with the kids: if the family is going somewhere YOU DON'T HAVE A CHOICE. You go with us, because the law takes a dim view on a five year old left alone in a house. This would be debate 100,001.

But I sorta realized at that point that the kids clocks were all off, and that part of the craziness was them readjusting to the odd sleep pattern . So we all scaled it back a notch, and the next few hours were great.

We went to take my Dad to pick up his grill, but it turned out he'd already done so on his own. So we swung by my mother-in-law and briefly saw Ginger. Two things off my to-do list. Then, when both sets of parents failed to produce any vegetable oil to borrow for the cake I was going to make, we hit a nearby Aldi's. The visit was 1-2-3, but it spawned the darnest thing.

YaYa gave Lu a horseback ride. Not for a minute. Not for a few feet. But around and around the store, and through the parking lot, and at the next stop too. Wow.



So since things were better I took them to Sonic, where the three of us were fed handsomely by the dollar menu.



The roller-skating servers excited them both, with Lu proclaiming that she should get a job there herself.

Parenting tip: If you feed a kid, or have a grandparent or babysitter feed them, they will inevitably return home claiming to have been offered nothing. They will ask "What's for dinner?" a mere 1/2 hour after a trip to a restaurant, and keep a straight face while saying it. So now I've learned. When they're eating I make them say - literally make them say the words - "This is my lunch and I'm not getting anything else."

After that we hit up a Dollar General for some household supplies and headed home. Per a request from Lu we took a bike ride around the neighborhood, finishing at the park.



And there an odd thing happened. A mother walked up to me while I was pushing the girls on the swings and told me "I don't know if you know this, but when you take a girl out to the park you should make sure they have shorts on beneath their skirt. You don't know who's watching."

As a point of fact Lu did have shorts on beneath her dress. I'd not only made sure of it before we left, I'd asked her again as she started on the swings. I'm not sure if I should be grateful for someone caring, annoyed at the sexist presumption of my ignorance, or creeped out.

Anyway, on the way back we had more drama. Lu fell all of two feet and made a big scene. She only stopped when I pointed out my thumb, which I'd jammed in my bike as I worked on the trailer attachment. My nail was visibly bruised and there was blood seeping out of it. No big deal, but to them it seemed mind boggling, enough to stop her fit about non-existent injuries.

"You're tough Dad," said YaYa.

"I'm not tough at all," I said.

"Sure you are, that's nasty. I'd be crying a lot."

"Eh, people have a lot of little pain over the years. When you're as old as I am you've kind of gotten used to it, that's all. You guys will be the same way."

And then, totally isolated from the fall, LuLu decided she didn't like that I was riding in front of her, or the direction we took, and eventually decided she didn't want to ride at all. Lovely.

Fit usually means "tired", so when we got home I put her down for a nap. Within a few minutes she was fast asleep on the couch with her mouth open.

A few minutes Smiley returned with my niece while my sister ran an errand. I mentioned yesterday that I wanted to take the kids to the planetarium. It was closed for the day, but instead I decided to treat them all, even my niece, to a show at the local Budget theater at $2 a head. Well, everyone but Smiley. He was great, and we sat together on our porch chit-chatting, but with as tired as he was I didn't place much faith in him making it through a 7:30 showtime. He stayed home with my sister once she returned, and she told him I was taking the girls for shots. He gladly stayed, and when we got back he was on the couch, covered with a blanket and barely awake.

We went to see "Monsters vs. Aliens", and it was surprisingly good. I mean very good, and the kids were laughing and chatting to me during the whole thing. Heck, I was laughing out loud for much of it.

Then a quick trip to two different Target's to find glow in the dark bracelets for the 4th (where we saw part of the Summerfest fireworks from the parking lot) and on to home. But my sister and niece needed a ride so we packed up the van again, took them through a busy McDonald's drive thru for my sister's dinner, dropped them at their place and headed home for good.

Tomorrow the big test - the 4th of July festivites.