One to One (Part 1)
One of the challenges of being a single dad is making opportunities to spend time one-on-one with each of my daughters. As I often say, usually when both girls are asking for me to help them with something, there’s one of me and two of them. Last month, however, the Girl Scouts came to the rescue, not once, but twice.
A few weeks ago, the eleven-year-old spent most of the weekend with her Girl Scout troop at Camp Sycamore Hills, not far from Nashville. The moms were invited along and the dads were not, but that was fine with me. The seven-year-old and I had the weekend to ourselves, and we made the most of it.
After dropping Hannah off with her troop at 8:15 Saturday morning, Lily and I headed straight to the soccer fields for her 9am game. I’m pretty sure that’s the only time we arrived at soccer early. Lily had a fun game, scoring a few goals as she usually does. (She’s all cool on the field when she scores, then, when she gets off the field, she tells me exactly how many goals she scored that game.) After a quick trip home to get changed, we headed into Nashville for the Nashville Film Festival.
A few years ago, I was mostly kid-free during the NaFF week, and I saw maybe a dozen movies, a fun way to spend the single guy half of my binary life. This time, I was in dad mode, so Lily and I saw the “Animation for the Whole Family” short film collection. Ten films, most between three and nine minutes long, all animated in various different styles. The film with the buzz with “Lava,” the short that will play before the next Pixar movie. We got to see it way before most other people. It actually wasn’t that great, but it was still fun to get a sneak preview. “The Numberlys” was probably my favorite, all about some number people working in a factory in the style of Fritz Lang who invent letters. Lily liked “Dustin,” about a pug named Dustin who meets a vacuum robot also named Dustin. You can’t go wrong with a cute dog, as far as Lily is concerned. Halfway through the films, Lily climbed into my lap, which made my day. I figure her days of snuggling are numbered at this point, so I enjoy it while I can.
Lily loved visiting the Green Hills theater where the film festival was hosted. If you’ve been there, you’ll know the parking garage is a little confusing. We parked on level two, then took the elevator up to level four. There we walked to the main entrance of the theater, only to realize that the film festival was using the ground floor entrance, which we could see by looking over the guard rail. Then we skipped down the stairs to the ground floor to walk the red carpet. My little engineer marveled at the ways the parking floor levels intersected with the different theater entrances. When she found out that the fourth floor was also ground level on the mall side of the complex, she gasped. It’s refreshing to see the world through the eyes of a seven-year-old.
After the movie, we had lunch at Cheeseburger Charley’s. Really, it’s quite rare for just the two of us to have a meal together, so sitting in the sun eating burgers and chatting was a treat. Lily’s sister is… talkative. Lily has adapted by keeping her thoughts to herself when Hannah is around filling up the airspace with words. But Lily has lots of thoughts, and it’s fascinating to hear her express them when it’s just the two of us. She’s silly and funny and creative. What a joy to hang out with her.
After lunch, and some free Jeni’s ice cream back at the film festival, we went home and played with my old school Lego collection for a while. You know the astronaut Lego character from the Lego movie? Yeah, I’ve got a couple of those. And since I don’t have any Lego sets that tell you what to make, Lily just uses pieces and parts to make her own creations. We made houses and vehicles this afternoon, along with… bionic people, I guess? And we made up stories about those people that we acted out, one of Lily’s favorite things to do. She named them Roger, Fred, Emily, Neil, Andy, and Clyde. Lily thinks adult names are funny.
Next came another favorite activity for Lily: running. You may recall that back in January, Lily and I went running together. That time, we covered a mile and a half, more of a run/walk than a run. This time, we suited up in our running gear, hit the trail near the rec center, and managed to run/walk two whole miles! And at a slightly faster pace than last time. She started off a little hesitant, talking about taking the short loop that isn’t even a mile, but once we got going, she wanted to go further. I may be projecting, but I think she likes the exploration involved in running, seeing what lies around the next bend. We took plenty of walk breaks, and as soon as she asked to turn around, we did. Still, we covered two miles, and we felt great. I’m telling you, that girl loves to run.
On the way home, we stopped at the grocery store (“In our running clothes?!” she wondered) for dinner supplies. This was definitely a make-your-own-pizza kind of night. While the pizza was cooking, we brought out the Legos again. After dinner, we played a couple of rounds of Splendor, my favorite new tabletop game, and enjoyed some brownies. An excellent way to end a fun day with the seven-year-old.
In my next post, I’ll share what happened the following Saturday, when Lily spent the day at Girl Scout camp and Hannah and I had fun by ourselves!
