... why don't you come with me little girl...

(edit: added link to earlier post)

... on a water taxi ride!


So I'm waaaaaay behind with things, but rather than try to recap what's happened, I'll aim to get to things in bits and pieces and simply jump ahead to today, 9/11/11. It's an historically significant date, to be sure, but I'm going to sidestep the politics and just focus on a date spent with my younger daughter.

In the morning I'd dragged both girls to the beach to get some exercise and work off some energy (photos to follow in a separate post). Neither of them wanted to go, but M needed some time on her own and I packed them up and drove them down and then they didn't want to leave. But that was morning. This was afternoon.

K had a birthday party this afternoon, which meant some quality time for me and L. Which meant that she suggested "maybe we can do thomthing Dada, like... get a cupcake?" Precedent set (and apparently I failed to write about that, but I could have sworn there was an entry to link to....and there is. Right here)! But no, we weren't going to get a cupcake this time. Instead we were going to catch the water taxi over to the city and back. L was fairly excited about this option, which boded (bade?) well.

The arc of our afternoon went something like this:

upupupupupsteadydowndownDOWNdowndowncrash.

The pictures show this:

Waiting for a... boat
(wearing slightly resort-y clothing)

Aboard and waiting to set sail
(with the prospect of sea lions in the offing)

We'd heard plenty of barking while we waited, and I knew the sea lions hung out at the buoy offshore, so I got us a seat on the starboard side of the boat, figuring we'd get close enough to see them. L told me she'd already seen sea lions at the Birmingham Zoo, but how much cooler to see them in the wild! I thought so, and convinced her the same.

She wanted to go upstairs, no, downstairs, by the window. She wanted the window seat. It was too sunny, where were the sea lions? When were we going to leave? There's the captain. What? There's our captain. What captain? The captain of the boat. Who? That woman. That woman? Yes, she's our captain. The's our captain? Yes.

And we did. We left. And we saw sea lions.

Sea lions splashing around the buoy, sea lions lying on the buoy, sea lions eating all the salmon in Elliott Bay!

Picture of Dada
(and she's turning into a decent photographer!)

One of the things I love is when L asks to use my camera. We gave her one when she turned 3, but she likes mine better, and takes fairly good photos with it. I want to encourage her, so I do my best to bite back my nervousness at handing my 3yo a not-cheap digital SLR. But when I do she fires off 5 or 10 shots in 4 or 6 seconds, and some of them turn out well. I think she's managed to get the best pictures of me that anyone has in the last couple of years.

On the way back to West Seattle,
(blood sugars low and tempers hot)

We rode, we saw the sea lions, we got close to downtown at which point L was hot and tired. She wanted to know what we were going to do. Well, get off the boat and stand in line to get back on. But what are we going to DO? I told her we were going to ride it back home and she slumped in her seat with arms crossed, muttering: "I don't like riding the water taxi!" When I asked why not, she said "Because it's boring!"

She perked up a bit when I told her she could sit in a row on her own. She sat behind me and held onto my arm (her default when she needs comfort). I could tell she was exhausted and probably needed to eat something.

Leaving the boat, she tripped on the gangplank going up to the dock while I was pulling her along and she tripped and fell and started crying and I carried her the rest of the way to the car. A woman walking behind us handed her a small American flag, which L held tightly while she cried into my shoulder.

L feel asleep on the 4 minute drive from Seacrest Park to home. This girl was running on empty!

Bed for both girls by 6.15p, and trust me, they need the rest! (So do we!!)