"Father's Day"

Last week Wally and I were shopping and he started yelling, "D my Daddy! D my Daddy!" Over and over again. Wally is learning his alphabet, but calls all letters D. He knows: D Daddy, D Mommy, D Wally, D Sander, D Papa, D Reder Ruby, and maybe a few others. Anyway, he had seen a Father's Day shirt that had a D Daddy on it. He really REALLY wanted to get it for Daddy. I really don't think I had seen him want something so badly before. We got the shirt and when we got home I had him hide it under our bed and told him that we had to wait until Father's Day to give it to Daddy. Well, as soon as Daddy got home, Wally ran to our room. I was able to stop him. However, while we were eating dinner, Wally disappeared. He came running back to the porch yelling, "D my Daddy!" and had Joel's shirt. So, Joel didn't get it on Father's Day, but seeing how proud Wally was to give it to Joel was priceless.

We celebrated Father's Day yesterday. I bought tickets for the three of us to go to a Cedar Rapids Kernels baseball game (minor league team). Then I realized that next week is actually Father's Day. Oops! Wally made Joel wear his D Daddy shirt and off we went.

Being a minor league team, we were able to get really good seats (aka front and center...I refered to them as George Bush seats...Joel quickly pointed out that I would be Barbara - guess Wally would be George W). Anyway, it wasn't very busy and having front row seat allowed for a lot of wiggle room for Wally. We had a great time, though Wally and I didn't watch much of the game, and Joel said the game was boring (2 runs the first inning, and that was it).

Wally was a bit perplexed about the racing pizza slices between innings. He also was fascinated by "baseball head man" (the mascot). One of the biggests hits was the trashman. A man came through the stands halfway through the game with a trash bag collecting trash. Wally thought that was cool. For the rest of the game, he hung on to his trash waiting for "trashman" to return. I could tell he wasn't going to return, so I thought I would take Wally up to a trash can. That wasn't good enough. We had to take the trash back to the seats. I got to take the trash home with me in my pocket since trashman never returned.

The biggest hit of the game occured before the game even started. There was a man there making balloon animals for the kids. Wally waited in line very patiently. We discussed what he wanted the man to make him and we practiced telling the man nice and loudly. When it got to be Wally's turn he loudly said, "Purple green!" He was so excited he forgot to tack "Doggy" to the end. While the man was making his doggy "Moose" (go figure), Wally's hand kept reaching out for the balloons. You could tell he knew he had to wait and was trying very hard not to have his hand out there. Finally, the man was done. Wally very politely said, "Thank you!" Though I imagine it was hard to say through his huge smile. We forgot to get pictures of Wally and Moose at the game, but you can see Wally is still very excited on the way home.We had a great time and will certainly go to another minor league game. Next time, we might try out the team in the Quad Cities.