Long Live Splash Pad Zed

She's maybe her most happiest this summer when she's at the Splash Pad.  Swimming lessons are a close second place, and of course watching Peter Pan may, on occasion, trump both.  She smiles a lot...I mean a lot.  She wakes up happy.  She laughs all day long, and well into the night.  She gets excited to eat outside, and she's developed a deliriously entertaining affinity for foam sword fighting where Dad is forced to play Captain Hook, and she never loses...not ever.  Of course, she doesn't like winning too easily either.  Dad needs to hang on tight to his sword for fear of facing the wrath of a young lady being patronized.

She draws and paints less, and makes believe more...much more.  She likes to eat anywhere but the kitchen table, and she's nurtured a hilariously intuitive sense of danger and propriety.  She'll tell you if you're being careless, but thankfully still crosses the line herself on occasion.  She falls asleep faster than she ever did before, but still requires some help to do so.  Books and "A Pirate Looks at Forty" sang not too softly.  She loves her room and misses her Grandma, who she woke up to for two years straight.  It's a mutual kind of missing I'm certain.

She sometimes hugs her mother's belly, and talks to her sister.  She has a baby doll to practice with now, and she's constantly reminding us that this or that little thing could be saved for her new sister.  It's nauseatingly cute.  She sings...a lot.  She plays a little shy when she first meets you...just a little...a comforting amount, but then warms up oh-so quickly if you're even a little attentive.  Give her your full attention and she'll remember you for months.  She'll talk about you and wish she could see you once more, and once again it's more cute than you can manage.  She makes friends fast, and is eager to assert that she has them even if she sometimes forgets their names.  She is only three and a half, I suppose.

Three and a half.  It seems to staggeringly young, so refreshingly brand new, but not quite, no, not anymore.  She still feels that way though. And soon there will be another...one more girl, a sister, to watch do much of the same, and so, so much different.  Two girls that will grow up too fast...but for now, long live Splash Pad Zed, I say...someday we won't remember the last time we were at a splash pad. Someday, but not right now.  Right now we get sword fighting and laughter all day long.