Daddies and daughters

Time has taught me to take full advantage of every spare moment I can get with my children.

Time has also taught me that when I see the 4898 digits on my call display at work, 4898 being the last four digits of my daycare's phone number, it is rarely with good reason.

Thursday afternoon, the numbers appeared unexpectedly, with a worrisome voice on the other end saying that The Daughter Formerly Known as The Latest Addition had lost her lunch all over the table and would need to be picked up, stat.

And so it is that I made my way to daycare, expecting to find a lethargic ball of a little girl when I got there, but instead picked up a little ball of energy whose petulance went beyond the boundaries of what we are normally accustomed to.

There was no sickness in that there little girl.

In any case, daycare rules stipulate that upchuckers are unwelcome for at least 24 hours after the upchucking has occurred, so unexpectedly I was treated to a surprise Friday reprieve from work, to spend in the company of my sometimes rambunctious, sometimes cantankerous, always marvellous baby girl.

It was outstanding.

We left the house bright and early, eager to get a headstart on some Christmas shopping, me and The DFKATLA, bound and determined to pack it all in, and then some, before the onslaught of moody, morose and some times malicious Christmas shoppers caught up to us.

So we bounced from store to store, way ahead of the crowds, her and I, daddy and daughter, sharing in innocent moments of fatherly-daughterly love, two people lost in a sea of shoppers, but completely, wholeheartedly, happy with their lot in life.

From here to there we went, me and The DFKATLA, sharing moments that meant nothing and everything all at once, culminating with a seat on a cliche shopping mall bench, both enjoying our respective cliche ice cream cones, each sharing a lick here and there with the other.

To script it any better would have been quasi-impossible, because really, I think, it could get no better than that.

Daddy and daughter, just the two of us, chilling, shopping, sharing in stolen moments that come few and far between when two other siblings typically vie for the spotlight that shone only in one direction that day -- brightly where it belonged, on The Daughter Formerly Known as The Latest Addition, who as the middle child tends to have to fight just a little bit harder than the rest to get the attention she so deserves.

She got it on our unplanned day together, The DFKATLA did. And I did too, for rarely is the attention all mine when toons and toys and brothers and sisters and mothers are my main competition.

Time has taught me to take full advantage of every spare moment I can get with my children.

Time has taught me well.