{"id":2703,"date":"2010-06-20T00:47:11","date_gmt":"2010-06-20T07:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/?p=2703"},"modified":"2010-06-20T01:00:46","modified_gmt":"2010-06-20T08:00:46","slug":"my-fifth-fathers-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/2010\/06\/my-fifth-fathers-day\/","title":{"rendered":"My fifth Father&#8217;s Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last weekend, we&#8217;re at one of those pottery painting shops. We&#8217;re almost done, and I&#8217;ve got Kaylee picked up so we can look at some of the painted pieces up on the higher shelves.<\/p>\n<p>She points at a big coffee mug and says &#8220;That says &#8216;Dad&#8217;.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The bottom part does,&#8221; I agree. &#8220;The last word.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I wander off. She looks back at it. &#8220;What&#8217;s the rest say?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I go back so we can sound out &#8220;World&#8217;s Best Dad.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She gasps and her eyes go wide. &#8220;They <em>painted<\/em> that for you!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She&#8217;s like to break my heart, sometimes.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Later today, me and my wife and my daughter and her mom will all go out to brunch together. Partly because it&#8217;s become this thing that we usually do; maybe because it&#8217;s a little different and a little different is &#8211; in this case &#8211; a pretty good thing.<\/p>\n<p>Then me and my two best girls will pick up the pottery we painted last week, go to the park, and maybe even see a movie (if I can talk Kaylee into it) or go for a bike ride (if I can&#8217;t).<\/p>\n<p>Kaylee and I will have some cold, leftover pizza for supper, because we like it that way. She&#8217;ll make up songs for half an hour while she plays in the tub before bedtime. Kate will read her some more of <em>Cricket in Time Square<\/em>, then it&#8217;s kisses goodnight and do-you-want-your-music-on and lights out.<\/p>\n<p>Like always.<\/p>\n<p>She&#8217;ll find me in the office in the morning and stand and watch until I finish the line, then crawl in my lap while we discuss how she slept, and what&#8217;s on the docket for the coming day, and what&#8217;s in the story I&#8217;m writing.<\/p>\n<p>Then clothes and breakfast and off to school; hugs and kisses at the classroom door. Every day, the person who asks for just-one-more is different, or maybe we take turns.<\/p>\n<p>On the way out the door I&#8217;ll be smiling because I know I&#8217;m picking her up that afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s my life, pretty much. A big part of it.<\/p>\n<p>Daddy.<\/p>\n<p>Long time coming. No other <em>now<\/em> I&#8217;d rather be.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 375px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Doze\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2802\/4106230349_e619f5463d.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The very best thing is when the trip and the destination are the same.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last weekend, we&#8217;re at one of those pottery painting shops. We&#8217;re almost done, and I&#8217;ve got Kaylee picked up so we can look at some of the painted pieces up on the higher shelves. She points at a big coffee mug and says &#8220;That says &#8216;Dad&#8217;.&#8221; &#8220;The bottom part does,&#8221; I agree. &#8220;The last word.&#8221; &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/2010\/06\/my-fifth-fathers-day\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;My fifth Father&#8217;s Day&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_import_markdown_pro_load_document_selector":0,"_import_markdown_pro_submit_text_textarea":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-untidy-heap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2703"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2708,"href":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703\/revisions\/2708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}