Evening Shenanigans with Papa

Dan is in the midst of a writing-intensive quarter at school, and is trying to finish a paper which he will present at a conference hosted by Northwestern University, the day after tomorrow. So, he's been a bit busy and noticeably absent; this morning Anika pouted through pancakes, "I want Daddy for SIX DAYS. Six days with no school."  For Anika, she may as well have said one hundred, because it don't get no bigger than six.  She counts higher, and throws out the billions once in a while, but the number to beat all numbers when expressing something truly important is...six. (Is it a coincidence that her beloved sister is...six? I think not.)  We were thrilled (particularly with the day we'd been having) to have him make a guest appearance this evening and we chose to ride on a heavy afternoon snack of oatmeal and take a walk during the dinner hour while we had radiant sunshine and Papa.

Here Anika demonstrates the proper way to ride a tricycle:

She is quite adept at it, wouldn't you say?

And then there's the Papa way of riding the tricycle:

For those of you who don't know Dan, yes he is riding it straight for me.

We discovered that the very fat cow (Mama, that is not a nice word. Honey, she's a cow. She really doesn't mind.  In fact I think she is proud that she is fat and healthy. But...I know, it's complicated.) was actually pregnant and had two shy sweet and very new babies with her.  Here is one peeking around a bush at us...

Eliza mused as she sat quietly watching the babies, "I wish I were a cow so I could lick my nose."  We sat in silence thinking about that for a moment.  "And I could drink my own milk!" Hmmm.

And here is the best moment the girls had together all day.  It was one of those days.  I did a lot of yelling about them yelling, unfortunately.  But this was nice...

Thanks Papa.