Today, the baby and I went to a market in the park down the street. There were a bunch of booths with the sort of stuff that is always at markets and that no one ever buys — beaded jewelry, leather wallets, a knife sharpening station, jams, a depressed-looking 20-year-old white guy in an empty booth with an insurance company logo on it for some reason. Also, a roster of musicians played on a stage at the end of a big plaza. When we got there, someone was playing the accordion, and when we left, it was a cover of “Friends In Low Places.”
“This is the first of probably one hundred thousand times you will hear this song,” I told Edith. “And I am really sorry.”
Everyone waved at Edith and said what a cute little boy she was and how they wished someone would carry them around in a baby carrier like hers.
After that, we came home and then in the afternoon, we tried out a little splash pad thinger I had bought for Edith. I set it up under the trees in the back yard, and then I got into the middle of it with her. But for some reason, I hadn’t really thought that it would be, like, really wet. I don’t know why or what I was thinking. I was operating on like four hours of sleep. So I was in my baggy cotton jumpsuit, and obviously within one second, I was in a sopping wet baggy cotton jumpsuit and freezing. Meanwhile, Edith was mostly confused by the whole thing. She didn’t understand what we were doing or why we were doing it. She looked at me kind of morosely as the water beaded all over her.
So we got out and after a flurry of soaking, dripping jumpsuit/cold house/screaming baby shenanigans, we lounged around on the back porch admiring the splash pad as if it were a water feature, which was much more interesting to Edith and more relaxing for me. We’ll try it again another day and I’ll wear a bathing suit like a rational person.
So that was my last day of parental leave. Tomorrow morning, I go back to work. I mean, I’m not actually going anywhere, technically, but mentally I’ll be off.
Accismus 