The Day After

Game over, man. Yesterday at the in-laws' was great fun, and now we enter the long, dark Christmas hangover of opening boxes, disentangling dolls from mechanisms, bands, and wires not heard about since de Sade published Justine, paper clean-up, and the constant retrieval of shoes, dresses, and assorted acoutrements proprietary to Barbie, Barbie Fairytopia, Disney Barbie, Polly Pockets, and other dolly detritus that makes my head ache. So I'll stop writing about it. Somehow, my Star Wars toys were different.

Today also marks the last day of my vacation, and I used it as any dad should: playing with Rhiannon. Dads from all over the neighborhood stopped in to play. At $10 a person, we did pretty well. Actually, here's a list of our activities:

Assemble and play five rounds of Don't Break the Ice. Assemble and play six rounds of Lucky Ducks. Re-assemble Fairyland playset. Unbox Baby Cinderella. Unbox and load Frosty the Snowman Pez. Decant seven sticks of gum. Read all ten, new books, some twice. Thanks to grandpa for the knock-knock jokebook especially. Assemble and deconstruct giant Sleeping Beauty puzzle. Unbox small Narnia puzzle and rebox immediately. Distribute chocolate. Assist in two beadwork projects. Unwrap, load, play, and somehow watch the original Barbie Fairytopia DVD. Assemble and charge portable DVD player. Unbox and collate Barbie Kelly with pony and accessories. Wrap Rhiannon in Jayni's new, winter fleece wrap. Unwrap a sweating Rhiannon ten minutes later. Distribute venison stick. Assist with Scooby Doo card clean-up. Read Christmas books again.

But the coolest thing we did today was go for our first treasure hunt together. Jayni was sleeping off Christmas and Rhiannon's head was still spinning from the past 48 hours, so no nap for her. We suited up for our 32-degree gray day and drove out to Anderson Park. My brother gave me the coolest gift ever: a Garmin eTrex Legend hand-held GPS unit, which I spent the better part of the day learning (in between all of the above activities), and then went to www.geocaching.com to register and locate treasure hot-spots that are a mile or less from our house. Finding one at Rhiannon's favorite park was fortunate, so we drove out and followed the unit to some concrete benches near the swimming pool. The treasure I was looking for had been taken, but Rhiannon found a bottlecap which she was happy to add to her collection. She has a treasure chest on the hutch into which she places these caps, foreign coin, shells, interesting rocks, and other natural debris that holds some unknown meaning for her (unknown to us, that is). We had fun, got cold doing it, and came home to a mystified mom who is glad that father and daughter are finally connecting. (<= joke).

Rhiannon cuteness came during opening when she got to the Little Mermaid DVD and shouted, "I knew it!" Predictable cuteness.

Andrew (Papa)