There was an accident in a campsite near where we were camping with Delores' family. A helicopter arriving on site to fly the girl out of the canyon caught the interest of all the nieces and nephews.
In particular, little Abigail chased the helicopter down the lane as it lifted off, shouting Bu'bye! Bu'byeee!
Then, as the helicopter disappeared over the other side of the mountain, Abigail began to call out, Cop'er! Co'per! Wh'are you. Co'per, wh'are you! It made me smile.Not long after the elating daddy experience last Sunday, Abigail turned the tables when Delores told her "Daddy will give you a bath".
Abigail crouched in her mother's arms, flailing her arms and trying to climb away from her watery fate, shouting:
"I l'you! I l'you! Gu-bye! Gu-bye!
I suppose I was dismissed. And the folks at church think she adores me. :)
My little angel has an amazing super power. She can thoroughly distract no fewer than five pews, forward and back. Not with tears, mind you. She distracts us all with pure, wide-eyed 2-year-old love of life.
A few weeks ago, the local high school's Madrigal choir sang in our church service. Normally, in our services, there is no applause after a musical number, so that members can meditate and internalize the message of the song. Not so with Abigail, who was on her tip-toes, hands on the pew ahead, drinking in the melody. When the last chord ended, she stood up, clapped her hands vigorously, and shouted "Yaaayyyy!!!" in the otherwise reverent chapel.
Today, during our sacrament meeting, Abigail added her "Aaaaymen. Amen. Aymeeeennn!" to the opening prayer, parroted the words of the priests blessing the sacrament, and added several more emphatic amens to each subsequent prayer.
Then our ward choir sang, which I joined in response to the bullying of a sweet, grandmotherly sister in our ward. We sang "Abide with Me", one of my favorites, which concluded with Abigail adding her fervent "Daddy! Dadeeeee! Preddy. Preddy. Daaadeeeee!"
I'll tell you, its moments like these that make the daddy job the best job in the world.
My computer desktop has been an absolute mess. Some software required for one of my graduate classes was incompatible with my PC, and my laptop monitor was broken. I rearranged my computer so I could get at the back easily to move my monitor back and forth from the PC to the laptop. This made getting at the front of my PC a touch difficult, but it did the job.
So, now that school's over, I wanted to relax by dropping a DVD into the computer. It wouldn't work. The computer just said "Please insert disc."
Sigh
I tried several discs, did some research online, re-flashed the firmware on my DVD player, and finally gave up. My drive was broken.
So it was that we purchased a new DVD drive, which I subsequently plugged in to my PC and...
I noticed that the other drive was also a DVD drive.
As it turned out, my DVD drive wasn't working because it was my CD drive!
Ha ha. What a joke on myself.
A long time ago I realized I would never again be known as "Keith" except to a select few. For example, when I married Delores, we moved in to a new neighborhood near the university and started an exciting life together. Attending church with a charismatic, lovely red-head got me a lot of attention. "Look, there's Delores' husband!" Only the bishop and a few friends new Delores' husband's name.
Then I became a daddy, and we moved again. Now I attend church with the same wonderful red-head, and a darling, precocious toddler. Everyone knows Abigail, so the nondescript tall brunette dude walking alongside Abigail must be "Abigail's dad". No "Keith" there.
One of Abigail's best friends comes to visit from time to time. One day, his mom asks him: "Would you like to go see Abigail?"
"No," was the reply. Not today I suppose.
However, his mother continued, "Abigail is going to see her dad. Do you want to see Abigail's daddy?"
"Yeah!"
And so it was that they walked in to our driveway with a little toddler boy chanting "Abidaddy, Abidaddy."
There's an old saying that goes: Fathers are those people who keep pictures where their money used to be. I suppose we lose our name with our money, but I don't mind so much. For a few minutes, Abidaddy was a cooler fella than Keith ever could have been.
From Michael: Oh, the joys of parenthood. I'm sure you've noticed the same thing when you walk through Mom's door. "Oh, Abigail's here!" Not Keith. Not Delores. Just Abigail.
We gave Abigail a small bowl of dry Raisin Bran to munch on this evening. In a grand moment of irony and profundity, Abigail picks out all the sugar-coated raisins and gives them to mom, explaining that they were "dirty". Delores didn't argue.
