Well I've got about 2 more weeks left of Daddy Day Care until the school year starts again so it's time to reflect back on what I've accomplished with so much free time.......(thinks for about 8 minutes). Well, that's depressing, all I can come up with is that I stained my deck and that took over a week instead of the usual 2 days. I do plan on switching insurance companies so when that happens it will be a major moment in my life but that's in the future. The issue has been these little people running around the house. They really demand A LOT of attention. And even though they are 3 3/4 now and can play independently for short spurts I still feel guilty if I'm not there for them. I think I created two little monsters at the beginning of the summer when I really put forth the effort to make it a productive summer. I think it was a Monday in the second week of the summer when this was my day: made bead necklaces, sand pictures, science lesson with magic sand, finger painted, swam, and I reorganized the playroom before going to work 4 hours at summer league basketball. I created too many expectations. I should've just started out by putting up a gate in the playroom, turning a Dora DVD on continuous loop & tossed in some Cheerios every few hours. Here's a more likely day at the end of the summer, microwave yesterday's cinammon roles, turn on a movie, hope the girl that comes for swim lessons takes a really long time, find another movie, and hope that the wife gets home early.
It's not really that lame, but sometimes I feel it is. The problem is that they've discovered dolls. Someone had the audacity to "donate" their entire collection of Barbie crap to us. Not just a few dolls & some disco outfits, no, I'm talking an entire Barbie hotel, a cruise ship, a 10 gallon storage bin of a thousand little plastic Barbie accessories that are all missing at least one piece and 3 naked Barbies. Yes, naked. Nana had to go buy clothes so my daughters wouldn't go through life feeling entirely inadequate from not having 44-18-32 measurements. Twin #2 has really taken to them. At least 6 times a day I hear, "DADDDDDY! Play Barbie with me." Now the first 74 times it was just darling. Stereotypical "AWWWW" moment when I happily plopped down in front of the plush pink Barbie hotel & merrily followed along with whatever little scenario played out in her creative little mind. Now....just the idea of having to pick up one of those plasicisized Jessica Simpson recreations brings on a daze to my brain like an overdose of Demerol. My method for doll play has become: lay a pillow on carpet, rest head, extend arm with doll & move around a bit while trying to catch a few minutes of stupor until I hear, "No Daddy, do this."
Problem is, the fact that I've come to disdain playing with dolls has filled me with terrible guilt. That's what they want to do, dangit, so I just suck it up & do it. I know that in 10 yrs. I'll be wishing they were asking me to play so I'm gonna take advantage when I can. Sometimes it's okay. Today they dolls learned to fly so that added some excitement. And if it wasn't 107 degrees every day this summer I'm sure that we would have done some amazing outdoor activities (I did put a tent in the back yard for 3 days but all that did was kill a nice patch of grass as it was actually 140 degrees inside the tent). So It's back to being on call for Barbie or dinosaurs or whatever other doll type toy they can come up with. Oh, gotta go - they want me to read a book!
