Father's Day

Me and the Grace-face have a nasty cold but I woke up to tape little paper Gracie-handprints all over the house to tell Daddy everything that we love, love, love about him. There were 24 hands (which was not nearly enough to include all the reasons, but at 10:00 last night when I finally was able to sit down and finish them, it was enough for my brain and energy to create.) So at 7:00 this morning (which obscene around here in the summer) I taped little hand-y-love-notes all over the house with my eyes about to burst under an enormous balloon of increasing sinus pressure and went back to bed with a happy little smile (and two tablets of Aleve) about the treat Daddy would wake up to. Some time later, I made breakfast, and the decision to skip church after the Grace-face sneezed and two enormous strands of green fluid draped from her nose to her chin; I thought it best not to share such amazing feats with others. After Daddy found all the little handprints, we hugged and kissed him till I am sure that it is just a matter of time before he finds himself needing to be very careful when he sneezes too.

The rest of the morning was spent getting my very own Daddy’s present ready. It came in three parts. A box of ammo from Gracie. A big-ol’ box of clay pigeons from the Josh-man. And a clay-pigeon thrower assembled and mounted to a tire from the kids. We we’re as excited as the proverbial kids on Christmas to give our Daddy this loot. We even broke years of Bockholt family tradition this time and opened presents first, before dinner and cake and all that. Because you see, I probably have the best dad ever. He’s been faced with a mountain of hard things in his life and has come out on top, with a wife, kids, and grandbabies that love him to pieces and take pride in the fact that we share his best quirk: we start conversations in the middle of a long train of thought and leave everyone else in the room wondering where in the heck the comment came from.

So to all of our Daddies and Papas out there (Daddy Bockholt, Dad Herrick, Grandpa Riggs, Grandpa Harley, Grandpa Ron, Granddad, Gramps, and ALL the Brothers –Blaine, Blake, Rob, Tim, Scott, Christian, Mike, Matt and Brian) Happy Father’s Day. We love you. A lot.

And ESPECIALLY you, Paul.

Bug Quota

Tonight was a good night, if you disregard the part where Grace and I were pretty frustrated with each other. The part where she was bored out of her mind and I was trying very hard, without the help of a Daddy who was at work, to get us ready to go somewhere interesting. Because that part was pretty bad. She insisted on being held and I insisted on not holding her and she SCREAMED and SCREAMED and I was this close to joining her. But then I realized that with 27 years of life experience compared to her short 10 months, that me screaming would be wrong while her screaming was justified. Either way, it's hard to think rationally when so much screaming is to be had. Just saying.

BUT!!!!

We made it. We got out of the house with cheese and ham and juice and graham crackers and sweaters and sunblock and a baby WITH a cute bow dang-it and went to a great little concert in a beautiful little community garden (and I ACTUALLY used all the stuff that I brought which is great because you hate to think that you spent a bunch of time packing stuff while your kid was screaming that you didn't actually need anyway...)

And Grace loved watching the singer (who reminded me what I want to name the next tiny girl one day, by the way...) and then she enjoyed crawling around, and then she would have enjoyed eating the bark-chips that lined the flowerbeds, but I decided she had consumed enough bark-chips last Tuesday at Gramma's house and licked enough dirt off rocks last night in the garden that her clay-dirt-vitamin-mineral-germ-bacteria-iron-bug quota had been met this week. Plus people were watching---which is the real reason I made her stop.

And then we went to In-n-Out, bought a strawberry shake which we shared with Daddy at work while he watered plants, and then, because no one was watching this time, we let Gracie play in the water and I took a sopping wet, very happy baby home to take a bath. And when she cuddled me with her wet hair and towel draped body, I knew that in spite of its very loud beginning, the night was, well,

Perfect.