Here and Now

Elie and I were just watching "The Little Mermaid" and she kept crawling on me... Suddenly, she grabbed my cheeks and said, "Daddy. I'm in love." Um...you're three... (actually, my mind flashed foward about 13 years to when she says that to me and means some boy who will be totally inappropriate for my little princess...visions of trying to scare him off with a variety of faked insanities...) So, I say, "With who?" "With you. And with Rachie. And with Mommy." Then she hugged me and gave me a kiss on the cheek - for which I was rewarded with..."Ow!" She twisted my chin. "Why do you have pepper here?" "No, that's my beard. I need to shave it off." "Why did you shave off your beard? I like your beard." "I shave every day." "It's salt...um...it's pepper." Then she settled back into my lap as King Triton threw a fit that Sebastian had allowed Ariel near humans...

There are things about parades I hate... Oh, let me back up - yesterday was Palm Sunday and we always talk about how Jesus led a parade that day (heck, Jesus WAS the parade that day) - especially when we talk to kids about Palm Sunday. So, I had the children's message yesterday and I asked the kids what they liked about parades and it was, predictably, clowns, firetrucks, candy thrown to them, water squirted on them (is this just something we do up here in Western PA?)... I told them that my favorite part of parades are the marching bands...but even they frustrate me - since you only ever hear part of a song... Actually, I hate parades. I don't understand why we show off firetrucks and zem zem cars and girls waving pom-poms and flags...what does all that mean... But, worse, I hate it when they give a parade and I don't know about it. Last fall we were trying to drive through a town (after a long and somewhat frustrating morning with the girls) and it was HOMECOMING weeke