Author: evancparker
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thank heaven for little girls
i was walking around the neighborhood today, trying to get baby sparklet to take a nap, when i passed a stressed out mom dealing with three boys on bicycles.
one of the boys was babbling about how his bike was a rocketship, and how he was having a really hard time making sure it didn’t explode.
i smiled, inwardly, thanking heaven for little girls.
half a block later, i see a 6 year-old girl in a fancy pink fairy dress, pell-melling down the hill at full speed, oblivious to the traffic, screaming:
i … am … SUPER PINKY!!!!!
now *that’s* more like it.
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firsts: swing
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picnic w/ fleishman hillard, washington, dc -
your seat isn’t bolted to the floor
well, koons screwed up again … they had told us that our plates and registration would be mailed to us, only to find out that a “new” law (effective 2002) requires us to get the car inspected first.their incompetence doesn’t leave us with much time to dilly-dally — our temporary plates expire in two days — so i got to spend an otherwise glorious saturday afternoon at the dmv.
favorite part: while i was waiting in the dmv office, a woman came in and started screaming at the guy behind the desk.
woman: “i don’t understand why you won’t inspect my car!”
manager: “ma’am, your seat isn’t bolted to the floor. whoever gets behind that wheel is going to get hurt as soon as they have to use the brakes. we can’t be liable for that.”
woman: “brakes? but i don’t drive the car *that* often.”
all of a sudden, the manager was *very* interested in helping me with my situation.
turns out that hybrids don’t have most of the usual “stuff” that emits (catalytic converters, gas vapor recovery systems) so there isn’t a need to check to see if it’s working.
the manager took as much time as he humanly possibly could explaining all this to me, glancing every couple of seconds to see if angry lady had left yet.
then, he handed me an emissions sticker that doesn’t expire until 2017.
woman: “2017?!? must be nice to not have to see these @#&%$ for that long.”
or, you could just bolt your seat to the floor. whichever.
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firsts: saturday market
photo of the week // week thirty-one -
video: the need to baby proof
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9RAALySsQw
i think it’s safe to say that baby sparklet is upwardly mobile now.
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careful the lessons you teach
not twenty-four hours after i showed sparklet how to play in a fountain — there was a little spraying water feature in the u.s. botanic garden — baby decided to show daddy that she mastered the concept, and could apply it elsewhere.elsewhere, of course, being a not-so-amused-emily-the-cat’s drinking fountain.
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out: children’s garden @ u.s. botanic garden
photo of the week // week thirtytook the day off from work to spend a little quality time with baby sparklet. we’ve been out straight between weddings and funerals — not to mention sick — and there was this little nagging voice in the back of my head saying that maybe it was about time for some father-daughter bonding.
… so of course this is the day that sparklet wakes up early, and then refuses to nap more than 20 minutes at a time the rest of the day.
she’s been teething since mid-April with one tooth well on it’s way in, and another two or three ready to pop through. of course, this has futzed up both her sleep schedule and her eating schedule, so cute beloved sparklet hasn’t been quite as cute this last little bit.
dodging rain, not to mention repetitive expressions of “i-should-probably-have-slept-longer,” we went down to the National Mall for most of the day. a little napping in the garden behind the castle, a little tummy time on the grass in front of the Hirschorn, and a little plant destruction in the botanic gardens.
we’re still working with baby on the basics of “gentle” — a term our cat emily would like her to pick up sooner rather than later — and sparklet just couldn’t seem to touch anything in the garden without destroying it.
wonder where she gets that from.
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out: children’s garden @ u.s. botanic garden
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