The Program

Yesterday morning was Caleb's and my first experience as parents doing what, in my opinion, is the reason one has children:

free donuts and songs performed in your honor by adorably dressed, illiterate ego monkeys.

Moms and dads and grandparents and approximately 32,000 cameras crammed into her daycare's basement (the church of my childhood, actually) for the festivities. True to our nature, Lindsey and I staked out a table closest to the muffins and muttered over why nobody else was helping themselves to the buffet. Harlow and her cousin Avery were first up. Her group of 30 or so toddlers were led onto gently sloping risers, handed maracas and instructed to reveal the choreography, that if her daily notices are to be believed, were of a rigor that might make a completely out of his mind on qualudes Bob Fosse feel some shame. And there was my girl front row center. The karaoke machine revved to life. Miss Carrie jumped up and down and shimmied. Harlow clenched her maraca between her teeth, flattened herself on her belly and commando crawled to a space between the risers. She was getting the hell out of there.

We couldn't have been prouder.

Harlow was redirected to her mark where she promptly squatted down in her adorable butterfly dress and displayed not so much a diaper but a seven pound mini zeppelin. Lazy teachers. Gnawing on her maraca like it was a hunk of turkeyleg, she surveyed the audience with a dispassionate eye. It was like a baby Martin Sheen from Apocalypse Now had suddenly materialized in the middle of "I'm Smushing up My Baby Bumblebee." The other toddlers blinked at Miss Carrie. Somebody started sobbing. Over her shoulder, cousin Avery was a virtual Mr. Bojangles, soft-shoeing to a song...somewhere.

It was a beautiful, beautiful thing.