Daddy's Girls

So, as you know, my girls have a daddy who travels fairly often for work. He works in as much father-daughter bonding time as he can during his time at home, but it can be tough, with household chores, bills to pay, other friends and family to catch up with, to get as caught up with the munchkins as I’m sure he’d like to be before heading back out of town.

This weekend he is in town, and we took the girls over to the local airport, where a touring company of World War II bombers visits every year. The girls have always had a fascination with airplanes, and getting to walk through these aging green giants: a B-17, B-24, and P-51, fills them with a ridiculous amount of joy. The fact that it’s at the small airport down the road, where they can watch small planes and helicopters take off and land during our tour, is also a big plus.

It was a great father-daughter bonding experience, as he’s a tad more excited by the whole war plane thing than I am, and can answer their endless questions about what this is and what that does all over the planes.

We returned home, got two happy and tired girls ready for their afternoon nap, and the two-year-old got a hold of her dad’s sweatshirt, and insisted on taking it to bed with her. She usually has me lay her favorite blankie on my shoulder, then lays her head on the blankie, while we sing a few songs before I lay her down. Today, she wanted the sweatshirt instead of the blankie. After putting her down, I tried to take it back, but she hugged it to her chest and said she wanted to sleep with it. I was a little worried about the zipper scratching her in her sleep, and asked why she wanted it. “Because it smells like Daddy,” she said. And so she fell asleep, hugging not her favorite stuffed animal, but her dad’s favorite sweatshirt, while downstairs, her dad was busy uploading the photos from the day, proudly showing the great shots he’d taken of the kids. I’m grateful for moments like these, when the amount of time spent apart doesn’t seem nearly as relevant as the amount of love shared between this traveling dad and these busy little girls.