Sprung

Yes, I know, I know: Between the tulip a few weeks back, the rose last Friday, and these purple things (whatever the hell they are), it’s starting to look like you’ve stumbled upon 1800Flowers.com. (Not a product placement; they aren’t paying me a dime. If they would like to, however, I’d gladly tattoo their phone number on my forehead in DayGlo colors. Hit me up.)

Because I’ve been working such insane hours the past couple of weeks, I haven’t been spending anywhere near as much time with my kids as I normally do … and I’m heading out of town Wednesday for four nights … so I was kinda jonesing for some daddy time.

Wonder Woman was presenting at a conference in Boston on Saturday (beauty and brains; nice), and had a couple of things she needed to do on Sunday, so I had the kids to myself quite a bit … and while that sometimes feels like a burden, it was a very welcome situation this time, because I, quite frankly, missed them—and I knew I’d be missing them even more while I’m away on my trip.

When we went outside to play yesterday morning, we discovered these flowers at the bottom of our back steps. It was a beautiful day out—first truly spring-like day we’ve had so far.

Zan and I played catch for the first time since last year, and he really surprised me (and, I think, himself), because he was catching stuff he wouldn’t have come close to snaring last fall. He was so psyched about his performance that he kept asking me all day to play catch with him again this afternoon, so I squeaked some time in for him, and it turns out yesterday wasn’t a fluke; the kid really knows how to catch a ball. (If you threw me a baseball when I was five-and-a-half, the result would have been not the wonderful “thwack” of the ball hitting the sweet spot inside my mitt, but rather the muffled “thud” of a ball smashing into my face or body, followed by crying and screaming of great magnitude.)

Jayna the Daredevil, meanwhile, asked me to stand at the bottom of our little slide, scoop her up in my hands when she came down it, toss her into the air “super-duper high” and catch her, which I did at least a dozen times, and another few times this afternoon.

It felt great to be outside with them. This has been one long-ass winter … and if you had shoveled as much snow as I have during the past four months, you’d get pretty damn excited about little purple flowers, too.