Daddy and Daughter Sunday: A Photo Essay
Next we gathered our belongings and took the stroller out of the car so we could wander up and down the main commercial drag looking for somewhere to have lunch. I’m such a fan of trying new restaurants but Nik’s choosy palate shies her away from branching out beyond the well-known unless she’s in a particular mood so when she can’t be with me I tend to make it a point to try something different. Maybe when she’s older Callie will be more of an adventurous eater like me and that can be something we share (signs indicate that, at least so far, she’s pretty open-minded about food). Or maybe not. But for now, since she’s beholden to my decision-making, I try to still go with something new to me without forcing my one year-old to endure Thai cuisine or Indian food with an unfamiliar culinary dictator (she’s too little to make her own ordering decisions). In this case I happened across an East Coast style pizza place I hadn’t tried and ordered us a slice to share. It was massive.
The pizza was delicious and we enjoyed people watching and making goofy faces at each other around bites of crust. When we left it was getting a bit late but I still wanted to give Nik a little more time to rest so we bumbled around a bit, checking out a little book store and enjoying the (indirect) warmth of the sun. After about an hour of window shopping and exploring we headed back and saw a little candy shop on a side street near our parking spot which we checked out. It was a pretty nice place if a bit pricey; we settled on a mini-Moon Pie (vanilla) for Callie and I got a Bounty bar which is pretty much a Mounds only with milk chocolate (in other words, an Almond Joy with no nuts).
The Moon Pie went over pretty well at first but she got tired of it fairly quickly and fixated instead on my candy bar, which was fine because I had basically the same reaction to the Moon Pie (which was the first time I’d ever tried one as well). As we headed out I reflected that in a real sense these are the experiences that parenthood is all about. It’s easy to think that the highlights of this lunatic endeavor are the big marquee events: Birthdays, “Firsts,” vacations, and so on. But in fact those coordinated and planned happenings tend to drown out the simple awe found in just being together with these amazing people materializing day by day, minute by minute before our eyes.
It was a day to treasure, and treasure I shall.
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