Trauma

When I pick Marceline up from her preschool, I always bring a snack for her and Edith to eat on the way home. Which is a little ridiculous considering that we are a 6-minute car drive, at most, from her preschool. But it helps get Marceline into the car some days, as she wants to stay and play at the Nature Center as long as she can. Edith too.

So this week we had some granola bars to eat as snack. I just bring one and break it in half for the girls to split. Not quite half, Marceline needs a bigger piece because she is older you see. So like two-thirds to one third. Which means Edith just inhales her snack while Marceline takes slightly longer, mostly seconds longer really.

On Monday Edith devoured her piece while Marceline I notice Marceline just stared at hers. So I made high pitched voice that said “Hi Marceline,” as if it was coming from the granola bar. So said hi back. And really, at first it was cute like most of our imaginary play. Marceline talked back and forth with the granola bar, randomly answering the questions I had the granola bar ask…. about preschool, how she was doing and other such nonsense.

Then I had the granola bar ask what she was going to do with it. And she said eat it. I pretended (as the granola bar) to be shocked. Marceline tried to explain that granola bars were tasty and that she was hungry. And that you were supposed to eat granola bars. The granola bar insisted they could be friends and friends don’t eat friends. Marceline again tried explaining how you are supposed to eat granola bars.

She then said to me, “Dad I want the granola bar to stop talking so I can eat it.”

Yeah….. I think I may have traumatized her.

It probably didn’t help that after some quiet time Marceline started eating the granola bar and then I had it say “Where are my legs, I can’t feel my legs.” Marceline said she ate it, playfully this time. I had the granola bar ask if the legs were tasty and if she was going to eat the rest of it. She said yes to both.

Gutters

So Sam and I pulled the trigger on getting the exterior of our house redone. It definitely needed something to happen. With siding not being an option, we had to pick between paint or stucco. We choose stucco. We didn’t have too many options for stucco here in Cleveland, but after some research we found someone well reviewed, who knew their work, got a good estimate and got the work started.

Two days of pressure washing and scrapping the paint off our house and things were doing good, unitl our weather broke. Went from 80 degrees to 40 here overnight with rain, hail and snow. Can’t work with stucco during that weather. But having removed all the downspouts, and with on and off torrential rain showers, we started having water pool around our house.

So we needed some creative solutions to manage the water run-off. I think we did pretty well.

2 daughters, 1 dad, 1 big playground

The title pretty much sums it up.

We spent 3 hours at a playground yesterday. And it was constantly walking from around one area to the other to check on my girls as they just spread out across the playground.

I didn’t even try to corral them because it wasn’t done. Just let them go and kept an eye on them.

Reminiscing

I don’t have this great need to look at my past and wonder where I’d be if I taken one route for another.

I don’t know if that makes me unique, normal, abnormal, whatever. I know the path that got me here and I’m glad for all the ups and downs that led me here.

I can honestly say I’m pretty content with my life. Again I don’t know how that compares to other people, but I suspect I do less reminiscing than most people.

We visited a park on Sunday that was in Sam’s hometown. It is her 100% favorite childhood park. Lots of memories for her and she was finally able to share.it with me and our girls.

And it was nice too. Beautiful day, if a little chilly. Quiet, not too busy. Pretty ideal for us to visit because we don’t have many reasons to visit Sam’s hometown, and don’t know when we’d have the chance again. The park has changed a lot from what Sam remembered. Not in a good or bad way, but was just different.

On the way there Sam pointed out places and memories that are important to her. We had, for a brief moment, considered moving there and Sam asked if I thought we could have made it work. I replied that we could have – which is the truth. But I think we could make just about anyplace work.

Visiting my hometown is different for sure. I have family there – which is always the driving force for a visit there, but Sam’s parents have passed and her brothers live elsewhere. So a visit to her hometown is filled with mostly memories, not people.

Or rather it’s never the same.

What’s that saying, you can never enter the same stream twice, or something like that.

Tickle Robot

We played robot villains today. I was a Tickle Robot and chased Marceline and Edith around the house.

Marceline was in her Supergirl costume and would “freeze” me with her freeze breath.

Marceline isn’t good at understanding where sounds are coming from. I hid in a closet and when she was right outside the closet door I yelled “I’m hiding in your room,” and she ran to her bedroom while I moved hiding spots.

It was pretty glorious.

Edith totally runs with both arms flayed behind her.

Successful Birthday

Marceline turned 4 yesterday. Sam said 4 was a big birthday.  Now I don’t remember that being the case, but I’m not one to tone down a birthday unless it’s my own.

We let Marceline pick her meals today. Donuts for breakfast, the morning playing at a library, ate lunch out and got to celebrate her birthday at preschool with her.

Sam made and frosted a cake. Homemade buttercream frosting wasn’t up to her standards, but I thought it tasted and looked fine. Besides we haven’t made buttercream frosting in a long time.

Marceline’s cake was blue with yellow frosting sunflowers and decorated with strawberries and blueberries.

Her big present was a new bicycle with training wheels and lights. It took us about an hour of playing outside to realize that the reason the light strips weren’t bright was because we hadn’t removed the steps of stickers covering the lights.

Shocking how much of a difference that made. But Marceline didn’t seem to care either way.

She feels asleep pretty easily, a sign of a good day for sure.

Doesn’t do the cake justice at all.