How life changes

Even though I’ve been at it now for awhile, I still find myself marveling at how my life’s changed in the last few years, due mostly to the arrival and continued presence of my daughter.

Today, it was a trip to Target on my lunch hour.
A few last minute Christmas baking items, mostly. But there were a couple of other things. After all the baking goods were in the cart,  I found myself looking at wrapping paper, because presents from Santa cannot be wrapped with same paper as presents from mom and dad.
Duh!
 And I’m looking at all of this wrapping paper, trying to think about what kind of paper the elves would use to wrap presents.
 Probably not the CARS2 paper, doubtful they’d use Toy Story or Tinkerbell themed paper… Would they use paper that said “Ho Ho Ho” on it?
Blue wrapping paper? Would they even CONSIDER using blue paper?

WHAT IF I PICK THE WRONG PAPER AND END UP RUINING SANTA CLAUS FOR MY DAUGHTER????
 This is a serious dilemma, my friends. And I laughed aloud at myself for spending so much time on it, startling the two older ladies who were standing nearby, conversing in polish, probably about what kind of wrapping paper they use at the North Pole.

 I went with a pattern that’s reminiscent of a candy cane, by the way. Red and white strips, mostly, with a little thread of green mixed in.

On the heels of the wrapping paper conundrum, I found myself looking at shoes for little girls. Right up until the mother of the little girl started screaming for security, and reaching for the can of leftover pepper spray she had in her purse, forgotten there since she finished up her shopping at 5:30am on Black Friday….

 Sorry, I drifted off there… Where was I?
 Oh! Shoes for little girls!

 See, Fiona has a light blue and white dress that we’re hoping makes it through Christmas. It's made it through a couple of holiday functions already, and..we're hopeful.
However, there was an incident yesterday, which forced us to dispose of her silver, sparkly shoes that went with that dress.
"But you can’t have a Christmas dress without the appropriate shoes!" some of you are saying.
I know, or more accurately, I've been told.

So I was standing in the little girl shoe aisle, looking for a pair of sparkly silver shoes in size 10, to ensure proper accessorizing on the part of my four year old daughter.
And I found just the pair, and spent several more minutes going through all the rows of boxes, trying unsuccessfully to find them in size 10.

Without exaggeration, I spent less time shopping for the last fishing pole I purchased.

 Yesterday, it was an off-handed comment I overheard a mom say, as my daughter told Santa what was on her Christmas list.
 Earlier in the morning, my wife relayed a story to me, about friends of ours shopping for or with their four year daughter. If I have the story right, she wanted, or had picked out, a car related toy of some kind.
 She was pretty excited about it.
 And the woman at the check out voiced surprise at it, surely she didn’t want the car related toy.
 (Inferred – that’s for boys.)
 And we were indignant on their behalf.

Fast forward a bit, we were at Brunch with Santa, at the Brookfield Zoo, a “My, how life changes" moment in and of itself.
Fiona’s telling Santa that she wants a drum for Christmas.
The woman standing next to me, likely not knowing I was Fiona’s dad, exclaims: “A drum? The little girl wants a drum?!?!?” And I was ready to throw down, right in front of Santa. I was gonna give this complete stranger a lecture about NOT being ignorant and forcing outdated gender expectations on your…. Blah blah blah blah. I didn’t, of course. Santa was watching.
 And a few moments later, my daughter got sick and hastened our exit.

 But oh, how life changes...