All of the following happened in the hour after I picked The Pumpkin up from daycare today:

 

•On our walk home [now that the weather’s nice, I’ve taken to rushing home from work and grabbing Waldo, the jogging stroller, and the iPod to pick my babygirl up from daycare, a block from our house], we pass a house where the dog always barks incessantly at Waldo.  Today, The Pumpkin says, “That doggie is sad, Daddy.”  “Why, baby? Does he want to come out?”  “The doggy needs his mama.”

 

•Once home, she wants to stay outside and play, so I leave the door open so I can peek at her while I start dinner.  “Come here, Daddy, I need you!”  “What is it, baby?”  “Watch this!”  I find her just over the threshhold, alternately bouncing her butt on her Dora soccer ball [“Boing!  Boing!”] and draping herself over it, head first, so that her head enters the house [“Whoah!”}.

 

•As we come inside to change a poopy diaper, Waldo lets out a ginormous belch.  “Say excuse me, Waldo.”

 

•”The place mat is gone!” I hear her yell as I’m in the kitchen.  “I need my jumping rope!”  Huh?  “Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies...”  I go toward the door—the mat that sits outside the breezeway door is missing.  “Ashes, ashes, we all fall DOWN!”  I find her on the concrete patio, jumping up and down on the overturned mat, singing and smiling maniacally.

 

•I  hand her a sippy cup of water.  “Thank you, Daddy!”  Drinks.  “I need music.”

 

•As I return from inside with the iPod, I hear, “A bug!  A bug!”  I come outside—she looks at me and says, “Where did the bug go?”

 

•Waldo burps again, and I point it out.  “I burp too.”

 

•Another trip inside, and she grabs a plastic Easter egg.  “I going bring my egg-ah!”  She proceeds to run outside and sing the ABCs at the top of her lungs, hitting the egg against the wall, rhythmically, tapping with each letter.  “Where are my jelly beans?” she asks of the egg’s former contents.  “You ate them all, remember?”  “I got some more jelly beans in my hands.”  I love pretend.

 

•”I want to see!  I want to see!”  She climbs up on a patio chair and pulls the iPod, in its speaker dock, toward her.  I touch the clickwheel so the screen lights up.  “What is that CD?” she asks, pointing at the cover art of the album playing.  “That’s Ozomatli, baby.  Can you say ‘Ozo’?”  “Ozo.”

 

•She throws the rubber soccer ball at Waldo, knowing full well that Waldo is, well, unathletic.  “Sorry, Waldo!” she says without prompting.  And then she proceeds to do it again.

 

•She runs from the grass toward the door.  “Ouchie in my shoe!  Ouchie in my shoe!”  “I’ll get it for you, baby, come here.”  I put her on the bench, take her Crocs off and sweep out the dried leaf bits, and put them back on.  I offer my hand to help her down.  “No, I can do it myself.”

 

•She spends a considerable amount of time scooping up armfuls of dead leaves from our weird tree that keeps its dead, dried leaves on its branches until spring from the ground and into her toy ride-in car.  “What are you doing, honey?”  “I putting leaves in the car.”  Like, duh, old man!  Once done with the car, she does the same with the storage cubby beneath the seat of her tricycle.  She accidentally smooshes a finger in the seat when she tries to stick her hand under the seat and sit on it at the same time.  Daddy fixes the “boo-boo” with some ice, which the quickly-cured Pumpkin finds great glee in sliding all over the patio table.

 

•She goes up and down the breezeway on her ride-on car, talking to herself.  I catch some of it.  “I getting the other leafs.”  “At the gate:  “Hi Mama!  Bye-bye, I see you later, Mama!”  To me:  “I back!”  A quick turnaround and back to the gate:  “I back, Mama!”

 

And yes, I still got dinner done [thank god for my dad’s Easter leftovers—mmmm, prime rib!].