A Dad's Story

It's Jim (aka Daddy)'s birthday today. What a difference it makes to have two little people help celebrate a special occasion. Before they came into our lives, we didn't give too much attention to our birthdays. You could even go so far as to say, we were not 'birthday people'.

Jim is a great Dad. Really, it's hard to ask for a better Daddy. Take this as an example. The other day, we visited the duckies at Codman Farm. Remember the adorable little creatures? Well, they are still adorable, albeit bigger than before. And what happens when you have little children with baby animals? They want to HOLD them, PET them, TAKE THEM HOME!

So what is a Daddy to do? He loves his children so much that when he had his chance, he scooped up one of the little ducklings so that the kids could pet one. What happened the few seconds after that was a bit of a blur. What I witnessed after I said "What are you doing??!!!!!!" was the mother duck (pictured above) with her full wingspan spread out as wide as possible in the air, right there, next to Jim's body. The kids screamed. I screamed. Jim dropped the duckling, and came over quickly to us. "What did she DO to you?" I inquired, still a bit shaken by the whole hubbub. "She KICKED me!" He said. And right away, Jim walked over to the very protective mother duck (who had calmed down and recruited her duckling back to the group) and apologized to her. Twice.

You can only imagine what came after this. "What happened, Mommy?" "Why did the duck kick Daddy, Mommy?" And so on, and so forth. We tried to come up with the best answers possible.

Well, even the best Daddy in the world makes mistakes. I think he learned from it, though, and more importantly, I hope the kids learned from that lesson, too.

Happy Birthday, Daddy. Thanks for trying to make us happpy! You are still the best Daddy in the whole world!