What a Weekend

Labor Day weekend was a perfect three and a half days from a Veronika and Papa perspective. Dinka's morning/noon/evening sickness kept my overly ambitious plans in check—I would have had us in three states in as many days—and confined us to Veronika's favorite local activities. We sure did pack them in:

• Friday evening: Biked to the park for swings and slides.
• Saturday morning: Dunkin Donuts for breakfast, Veronika's favorite. Her donut of choice is chocolate frosted with sprinkles.
• Saturday mid-day: Tricycle riding around the parking lot. She was doing great but was quickly distracted, so I ended up doing a lot of pushing.
• Saturday evening: Headed to a local lake for sandcastles, wading and swimming. Veronika showed no signs of her former fears of sand and water, which really helps at the beach.
• Sunday morning: More donuts for breakfast!
• Sunday afternoon: Went to a different park for Digby's birthday party (he's three already) and some hiking.
• Monday morning: There may have been one chocolate sprinkled donut left. Don't look at us like we're bad parents.
• Monday mid-day: Back to the swing/slide park.
• Monday evening: Back to the beach for a repeat of Saturday night.

I think Veronika dreams about weekends like that, or at least thinks about them when she's supposed to be sleeping but isn't, like she's doing right now. Almost everything about this weekend was as good as could be expected. The perfect end-of-summer weather—high 70s (° F) with no humidity and not a cloud in the sky—provided us with perhaps the last opportunity to swim of the summer. Veronika was on her very best behavior, presumably because we did everything she wanted for three days straight. The only problem was that we were missing the crucial third part of our family, Mama. Even when she came along, she was too tired and/or sick to enjoy the time much. Veronika and I did our best to not be burdensome but only time will help, I suppose.

Veronika is so much fun to be with right now, it's indescribable. Not only is it one of my favorite things to do now, it's one of the best things I've ever known in my life. Just to see her face light up when she sees the object of her obsession—ever since the trip, it's been planes—is enough to turn around a bad day. She's so engaged in the world around her now that it's a pleasure to take her places and see her mind at work. She's a master of the two- and three-word combinations and has even started combining those combinations, coming pretty close to sentences at times. Yesterday I put one of her necklaces around my forehead. She frowned, took it off me, said "No, like this" and demonstrated how to do it correctly. A little while later, she wanted to watch Winnie the Pooh and before putting the DVD in, she breathed onto it, lifted her shirt and wiped it on her bare belly to clean it. How do you describe how awesome this stuff is?

On the new baby front, I unexpectedly felt my first twinges of a feeling that Kevin Fanning touched on in the second new fathers roundtable at The Morning News—how can I share my time with another child? I was sitting on the beach on Labor Day when it hit me, Veronika wrapped in a towel and sitting in my lap, basking in the September sun and the glory of a wonderful weekend. I was so full of love and happiness in that moment that I couldn't imagine how having another child wouldn't somehow diminish what I had with Veronika or could give to her. I guess this is probably something that you can't understand until the second child arrives. Given the way that family life has turned out so far, I'm not too worried about it.