Water fun

“What are we going to do that’s fun?”

This is the question that Olivia asks of me lately when I pick her up from preschool or daycare. I ask you, is it my duty to provide her with fun in the park every day? I’ll be carting her off to daily dance or soccer or swimming or violin soon enough — she can learn some self-entertaining skills that will come in handy. Climbing down from my fatherly soapbox now.

Tonight, I said that we would (with proper behavior) take the canoe down to the lakeside for the first time this season and go for a paddle. They behaved, we paddled (more or less — this is a motor skill not yet mastered by these kids), we stayed dry, and had a successful first spin on the lake.

Last week, I took the family fishing for the first time. No one got hurt, the children left with a positive-enough memory, they want to do it again, so I’ll call it a success. I’ll also see if I can get the girls out one-at-a-time for the next try — it’s amazing how quickly great lengths of fishing line can get tangled in an unassailable ball when you’re busy helping the other sibling.

 

Please curb your rabbit

On Saturday, Lily found a small, round, desiccated tan item in one of our perennial beds.

“What’s that, daddy?”

“Hmm. It’s old rabbit poop.”

Lily didn’t think that rabbits should be pooping in our garden. So she took her chalk and wrote a message on the driveway closest to the garden bed. It had a simple drawing of rabbit scat, overlaid with a circle and a line through the circle. That would be the universal “NO!” sign. Then she added a line of scribbles with a few letters and pseudo-letters mixed in. I asked her what it all meant.

“Well, that’s Frrrrench wrriting.” She trills her some of her R’s. “When da rabbits come here in the night wif their flashlights, they can see it. It says, ‘No rabbits poop in the garden wif da yellow flowers.’ ”

“Oh. Where will they go poop then?” I asked.

“In the forest.” Duh! Don’t you know these things, daddy?

 

New bicyclist alert

A bicyclist has joined the family. Olivia rode without training wheels for over a minute at a time, negotiating both left and right hand turns, slowing and braking at will. Well, almost at will — the braking/stopping is not reliably smooth, but in a pinch she will bail out or fall over.

This is not a shocking development. She was on the verge successful sustained riding last fall before the cold weather halted children’s biking. Her bicycling development mirrors  some of her personality: diligent, determined, and a little impatient to master something that she felt was almost in her grasp. She doesn’t immediately look for sympathy or attention when she falls, but seems to run an internal diagnostic before announcing her status. Like many things in her life, it came somewhat easily to her, and now she’s ready to use it to jump into other things.

For me, it was a lot of fun both in watching her accomplishment and in working well with her to provide a little bit of coaching. I treated practicing how to stop as a game while providing some insight as to why it was so important, and mostly cheered her on and fixed dropped chains (finally got the wheel backed out enough to keep the chain taut).

Just a dad getting to do something that dads are good at. Doesn’t get much better than that.

 

duck… duck… mud…?

My wife owned a dog before she married a husband. Some days she wonders why she ended up keeping the husband and giving away the dog, but that’s neither here nor there. (Specifically for the record, the dog was incompatible with young children and the husband was both compatible and extremely helpful with young children. The dog moved on to a child-free home.)

Gromit the dog

Gromit is a pointer. He loved going to the dog park, playing with other dogs and, most of all, chasing waterfowl and rabbits. Generally an obedient dog, he was nothing but raw canine instinct when prey was in his sight. Command? What? Did you say something?

On Wednesday evening, I took the girls to a playground. When it was time to head back to the car, instead of motioning them to the bike path that led directly to the car, I pointed toward the soggy field and foolishly said, “You can walk back that way and get a closer look at the birds.”

The birds were a mixture of mallards and pintails. The attraction of this field for these twenty or so dabbling ducks was food. Standing water in a grass field fits the bill for a nice duck dinner.

In the mind of a five-year old, grounded ducks fit the bill for a game of chase the birds. Once locked in on her prey, the outside world (i.e. daddy) fell away. Olivia  expertly moved the flock just enough to find separation between three ducks and the remainder, and drove that wedge. Wearing a bulky winter coat, cotton pants and flip-flops, she had her selected trio on the run. With the bulky-coat gait of a three-year old, the speed of a five-year old and the frozen smile of glee of a demented duck chaser, she laughed and relentlessly pursued, oblivious to my calls or anything else including what might happen if she actually caught a duck.

If it weren’t for the mud, she would’ve been there until dark or until she had dispersed the entire flock. She couldn’t hear my pleading, but she came to a sudden stop when her flip-flops became mired in some deeper mud. She stared at her feet, looked over to me, and shouted with incredulity: “I’m… stuck! My feet are stuck!”

Daddy and the ducks quietly cheered.

 

Bobber, hook and worms

Our family has rented a spot on the neighborhood boat rack this year, so Olivia and Lily and I walked down to the beach to check out the rack (daddy) and the water (children). It was a warm weekend with high temperatures in the low 60’s, so the girls waded into the lake water up to their knees. The bay was clear, but I could still see ice on the main body of the lake off in the distance, so I let the children have the icy water to themselves. (The way I look at it is that I just spent the entire winter trying to keep my feet warm — I’m not about to blow it now.) They didn’t complain, but they didn’t stay in for too long at a time either, and played in the sand to round out their “summertime practice.”

Another summer prep activity was to pull out the new fishing poles for assembly. I have not fished in many, many years. When I fished, my tackle was limited to hook, spinner, swivel, sinker, bobber, hook and worms with the occasional floating tri-hook lure for muskie fishing. The starter tackle kit that came with the new fishing pole had lots of colorful, weird stuff, so it was almost as new to me as to the children. They are looking forward to their first fishing experience.

Usually, when I mention fishing I have to put in a disclaimer that no, we will not be keeping any of the fish we catch as pets. If we keep any fish, they will be to eat. It will be interesting to see if they want to see exactly how those fish get turned into food, and what their reaction will be.