Daddy Tree: Tiny Footsteps

Willow's imagination has started taking off. A few months ago, she started treating her Little People Disney princesses like puppets, speaking for them and hopping them around the floor, mingling with other tiny dolls or horses. That was the beginning, really; now she imagines dragons nesting under the dining room table, ready to take flight to steal the food of Lily's tray. Or she piles up wooden train track tiles in a bean bag and folds the bean bag on itself, treating the bean bag (as bulky as it is) like a shopping bag. She drags that shopping bag across the floor, then unloads it on the coffee table in front of me, ready to check out her "groceries." Sometimes, she tugs Lily into her make-believe world, as the second princess locked in a tower built of stacking blocks that is about to be bombarded by the fiery breath of a much meaner dragon than those that reside under the dining room table. Of course Lily has an imagination too. She likes to imagine what tha...

Most of this blog is devoted to Willow the Super-heroine. As you probably guessed way back when, Willow was going to turn 2, eventually, and at that age, all the sparkle came off (in her parents' eyes anyway). A month or two after Willow turned 2, she turned "Terrible Two." The super-hero cape came off, and the devil horns went on. That, along with Wee Baby Sister Lily, meant life got a lot more hectic for Dear Old Dad (and Sweet Pretty Mommy). Yep, Daddy went into a self-pitying (and loathsome) pit (and the blog shriveled up in the corner). The Terrible Twos for us meant super-long bedtime battles and fight-at-every-breath tasks (from teeth-brushing to car-loading). Everything came with a struggle, a long, breathless and soul-sucking struggle. That can wear on a Daddy, and a Mommy. And a Terrible Two. But as my sister prophesied, the utter despair was going to pass (now it's just a smidgen of despair; I kid, I kid; life is much calmer, and quieter). I don't ...

OK! Whew! I took a bit of a looong hiatus there. But, hey, being the stay-at-home dad of two, um, boisterous little girls can take some time to adapt to. But I'm back and focused (and getting some sleep), so here we go! Welcome back to the continuing adventures of Lily and Willow and Daddy.

Compared to her sister, Willow hasn't been much of a smiling baby.  She laughs and giggles and smiles genuinely when she's happy, and she seems like a happy little girl, but when you ask her to smile, she puts on much fakery. Up to this weekend, whenever you asked her to smile, she stuck her forefingers in the corners of her mouth and pushed up, or she looked high to the sky and opened up that grin. SMILE!  Things have changed. She unveiled her new smile at the Dixie Stampede pre-show photo session in Pigeon Forge. It's piracy! As in, she looks as if she's saying AAARGH, and the smile leaves you wondering where her parrot is. Here's a pick of her new AAARGH smile.

Willow and I ventured down the driveway to get the mail on Wednesday. The usual stuff came in, junk mail, bills and inefficiencies (when you have a baby, you get bombarded by bills and threats from the hospital, the health insurance company and the employer, the latest being a letter from the employer demanding proof we used the money in our health savings account to pay the birth of an actual baby ... I'd like to invite them to spend a night at our house for proof of said, yawn, baby). Where was I? Oh, yeah. Please forgive me while I shake the tangent fog from my head. After Willow and I returned to the house with the mail, I filtered out the important stuff and gave Willow the unimportant stuff, the credit card offers. Willow spent the next 30 minutes opening the letters, organizing then reading them. Getting letters, no matter from whom, is great fun for her. One particular letter was from Bank of America, hawking a rewards credit card (3 PERCENT CASH BACK ON GAS!!!). I aske...

Newly born Lily cuddles up with Mommy. Whew! Things got crazy there for a while, during the Summer of George (AKA the Summer of Lily). Cherish returned to work today after a lengthy maternity leave (but not nearly long enough), and with that, I returned to my job as stay-at-home dad. We did tons this summer -- Cherish declared it the best summer ever. We trekked to places unknown, ate at places well known, and we uncovered places in ourselves we hope will be better known. We had good times and bad, but almost all of the times were good, and that was a great achievement during this, the Summer of George. I won't recall it all here, but here's a taste of what we experienced: Foremost, Lily came into this world, all 8 pounds, 5 ounces of her. She rang in smaller than her sister, who topped 10 pounds, but she was no less a bundle of happiness. Lily has a touch of red hair like her sister, and she has bright blue eyes (they are smiling Irish eyes, believe me). The sisters...