Sunday, May 3, 2009

an ode to my dad...



you thought we invited you to come down,
just to deliver a bed.

little did you know about
the list of jobs i'd conjured in my head.

we worked you like a slave
for 24 hours straight.

we worked you to the bone
and in the end you were the one to fill our plate!

put together a crib three times?
make a new attic floor?

hang impossible items?
and then you said, "is there more?"

words cannot possibly thank you enough.
you truly are the best.

your expertise and help
are leaps and bounds above the rest.

so please, dear dad, thank you and
we hope you are resting.

and i wonder, after watching your wife do it five times,
do you think i am nesting?? :)

thank you, dad! we love you!!

so, my amazing father came down to visit at the drop of a hat, to deliver lily's new "big girl bed." he truly was coming on that pretense alone...but once i knew he would be in town, my imagination started going wild with all the possible jobs he might be an expert in helping us with.
this is just a list of a few of the jobs he did for us in one short day:

- make a new attic floor (and he and ry both said it was over 100 degrees up there!)
- remove a crazy-hole-inducing-hanging-calendar from the nursery wall.
- proceed to fix said holes in the wall
- rehang the calendar in a crazy place i conjured up that was nearly impossible!
- fix a phone jack that looked like it could electrocute someone
- install a new motion sensor for our outdoor porch light (he came up with this one on his own... i can't take credit for it!
- fix all five of lily's dresser drawers that were a HUGE pain!
- rearrange the nursery furniture with me about three different ways
- disassemble the crib because it would not fit through lily's door to go to the nursery.
- reassemble the crib in the nursery
- assemble lily's new bed
- get lily a mattress
- set up her bed with safety gate
- and still find time to take us on a run, get lily's FIRST ever donut (which she LOVED!) and go for coffee...and then grill us dinner!
phew!!

amazing, right? i know... he needs to charge us! thank you a million times over, dad!

and lily is in love with her new bed. upon coming home from any outing, she immediately says, "get in big girl bed??"
and last night when ryan got home the first words out of her mouth were, "daddy, look at big girl bed!" she ran back to her room with him and said, "daddy, isn't it beautiful?!" i have never heard her use the word "beautiful" before! wow! she is one happy girl!


lily waking up after her first night in her "beautiful" bed!

a tasting of some of the home improvements:

the nursery (and no, we don't know the gender...blue just happened!)


the less than 2' x 3' door that my dad and ryan had to finagle all of the wood through to the attic!


our new bathroom window.


new basement setup


new "office" space


and this may not look so tricky, but you have no idea how fortunate we are to have it hanging!

thank you again, dad!

2 comments:

Katie and Adam said...

Ummm.... a few thoughts.
1) Great poem. Loved it. Skippy is probably in tears.

2) Katie and I just slept where your desk is and got on the internet in the nursery like a week ago.

D) FIRST DONUT??!! Poor deprived child!! I mean, no meat is one thing, but NO DONUTS???!!! We almost needed an intervention! Thank goodness you guys came to your senses. Skippy really saved the day on that one.

the hammocks said...

dads are great, aren't they? i bet you feel so much better having completed so many projects!! now we just need that cute baby to get here before you can find more projects to do!! isn't nesting great!?!

ava ate her first donut while supervised by her grandparents too! interesting!!