I love this picture, I've set it as my desktop background. Lilly looks like a little thief: the striped shirt, the profile, the "caught with her hand in the cookie jar" look, without the telling, knowing look on her face. She wasn't doing anything, really, just playing with the cables behind the entertainment center; I was trying to get a portrait shot of her when she turned to grab the cables like the curious, wants-everything girl she is. Plus the picture shows off her beautifully-shaped head, which looked just the same the second she came out into this world; her cheeks and chin and nose, too, aren't they cute.
I love my daughter, though a times she can be trying. She has her phases. But I figure it's me that needs to shape up and be a better papa, those times I feel a twitch of grumpiness fluttering up through my chest, coming to rest in tense knots on my shoulders and neck.
Now she loves to play at this and that: so long as we play with her. It's the impression. She does play on her own quite often, runs off into the other room with her sack full of goodies and her box or whatever new toy she's found. But when she does want you to play with her you have to do it her way and be fully attentive, not off on some daydream about that book you've been meaning to write, or that thesis you better damn well get around to. If you aren't nearly 100 percent, she'll call you on it. Then she gets grumpy or looses interest in any one activity after a second or two: she wants the computer, the keys, the wallet, a pen; she wants to watch her DVD or play with the photo magnets on the fridge or dump her water on the ground so she can wipe it up dry.
Sometimes I feel like it's a lot. To be at that level for four hours, say, it's hard to keep my head in it. But I always get sentimental (after the grumpy, tense part) and think about how it's all the time I've got with her and I better make the most of it; she's going soon, or worse, she's already gone and she wants nothing to do with me. I can't get enough of her. Give me Lilly 24/7, I think, it'll be the best thing I do all day.
It's OK to be bored. It's not always meant to be fun: as I've said, it's trying, tense; it's up sometimes, and other times it's down. It's gonna be that way. It's everything I could want and more, if I just "be" there with her, be there with her and feel life chugging at its long choo-choo ride: across the plains and the mountains, the expanse bridge across the gully below; through the rundown town in the middle of nowhere, the busy city, industrial rail yard, wherever; underneath the ocean and out again on the other side, we come to this place where the sun-filled sky colors the green grass on a mound of earth, I stand there with my daughter at my side--she's always that small, always that big--just the right size so I can rest my palm on her crown of baby soft hair, as we look out together at the rest of that beautiful life in front of us, surrounding us. I'm OK with the occasional boredom. And I can order a massage. Sure I'll get gray hairs, and in fact I already have. It's all what I'm in for, and I'll take it one day at a time, at a time, for as long as I can.
Enough of that rant, you say, give us more pictures and be done with it. Granted. I leave you with this: our precious Lilly, during her favorite pre-bedtime ritual--tonight she even said it, bade, a look of pure delight--bathtime!
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