Love Your Daughter at Work Day

London just woke up in my office, having been moved here mid-nap.

She rolled over, her slightly sweaty wisps of hair sticking to her neck, raised her head up, and realized with a bit of surprise that she was in my office.

She smiled.

“You’re in my office!” I said.

She smiled again.

I got up from behind my desk and walked over to the couch. “Did you have a good nap?”

“Yeah, I did!” she exclaimed, her cheeks streaked with red lines from the blanket I’d tucked around her.

I scooped her up, and she asked if I could take her shoes off.

“Sure, baby.”

“Thanks, dad!”

I removed one pink sandal, then the other. “Thank you, daddy,” she sighed.

“I have some toys for you to play with. Would you like to see them?”

Another smile flashed across her face. “I’d love some toys!”

I pulled her close to me and told her she was adorable.

Because she is.

My Daughter—Master of Walking The Fine Line Between Inappropriate and Hilarious

Two nights ago, our family went to the Opryland Hotel to check out the incredible light displays. While we were walking through the atrium, we stopped to let London (our just barely 2-year-old) play at a fountain. Before long, a few kids had come up to play in the same spot, and one of them was a little Hispanic girl.

London looked at her and immediately shouted, “Dora! Dora! Dora!”

London then began running from an imaginary Swiper the fox, yelling “Swiper, no swiping! Swiper no swiping!”

I think the girl was confused.

…Not sure if all of this was adorable, mildly racist, or some strange combination of the two. But I’m counting it as a celebrity sighting at Opryland.

Tears, Fall

A couple of days ago, London looked out the window as she ate her peanut butter and jelly and said, “Leaves. Fall.”

I looked out and saw the wind pulling the yellowed leaves from the maple tree in our backyard. “Yes,” I said. “The leaves are falling off the tree.”

London pursed her lips and pushed her eyebrows down. Then she looked at me and said, “Sad.”

Evidently, God wires human beings to mourn endings. We hate goodbyes, we savor the last few pages of a great book, we cry at funerals. Even a not-quite-two-year-old instinctively grieves the expiration of a leaf.

Endings are sad.

Perhaps that’s why heaven has none. Tearless eyes…forever. Joyous hearts…without fail. Full-out praise…eternally. Face-to-face contact with God…uninterrupted.

None of it stops.

Nothing good ends.

I can’t wait for that to begin.

Huge Insect Attacks Small Child

Not to worry: this is not a shot of London’s final moments just before losing the battle with a giant Orthopteran.

She found this bug at the church building last night (evidently a prop from a 10 Plagues VBS skit) and immediately fell in love. It’s not even soft; the thing weighs about 3 pounds. She carried it around all night, and when it was time to leave I couldn’t resist letting her bring it home.

I love a lot of things about my daughter. But one of the things I love most is her innocence—her unrestricted, unsuspicious, unafraid love of anything living. Bugs have long since been objects of her fascination; she has no qualms about bees, spiders, or ants. If they come near her, she’s delighted. “Bee!” she says (this is what she calls all insects), excitedly offering her greetings and expressing amusement at its presence.

She has no idea it could sting/bite/infect her.

And it’s adorable.

I realize that eventually Jen and I are going to have to teach her all the stuff that makes people hate bugs. (Otherwise, if she ever meets a giant locust in real life she’ll be in trouble.)

But for now, I’m soaking up her naiveté. And she’s having a blast, as you can see.

My Daughter Milked A Goat.

We took London last weekend to a Fall Folklore Jamboree out in the country. (By the way, when you live in a 6,000 person town and call somewhere “the country,” that’s noteworthy.)

Her favorite part? The “aa-muls” (animals, for all you non-parents).

We knew there were going to be a handful of animals, but my eyes lit up when I saw a girl with a sticker on her shirt that said, “I Milked A Dairy Goat.” The sticker had me at “milked.”

Eventually, we found the right tent and spotted the line with the uncomfortable looking goat at the end. Walking up with London (she’s now 22 months old) in my arms, I noticed all the kids in line were around 6 or 7 years old. I looked around and was relieved to find there was no “You Must Be This Tall To Milk The Goat” sign, so we took our place in line and waited.

As we got close to the action it became apparent that when it came right down to it, most of these kids were a little freaked out by the idea of clutching a tied up goat’s nether regions. “Nevermind,” one kid said. “Ewww!” exclaimed another. “Uh-uh,” decided the girl in front of us.

And then came London.

As we neared the beast I asked her, “London, do you want to milk that goat?” “Oh-tay!” she replied.

So I set her down on the goat lady’s lap (this was a woman seated to the goat’s immediate right, her sweatshirt and pants sopping wet from errant milk spray) and waited for the moment of truth.

“Okay—heer’s how ya do it,” said goat lady, grasping what looked like a hairy finger of a water-filled surgical glove. She gave it a pull and a squeeze, and like milky magic, out came a thin stream of whitish liquid traveling with surprising velocity into the bucket below.

Awesome, I thought, just before I threw up in my mouth.

“Are ya reddy, darlin’?” goat lady inquired of my 22 month old, fully domesticated daughter. “Yes!!” came the reply.

With that, London reached under the nanny’s hindquarters, grabbed a teat like it was running away, and gave it a squeeze that made the goat’s eyes roll back a little in her head. Ksssshhhhhh—the milk spurted forth as if it had been freed from purgatory.

“Woah!” said goat lady.

“Oooh!” said London.

“Holy mackerel!” said me.

The goat lady peeled an I-Milked-A-Dairy-Goat sticker off the roll, handed it to me, and said, “You put that on her, daddy. She earned it.”

And that is why my daughter is awesome.