A New Daddy in the Middle

María José made a special effort to make my first Father’s Day as a father a good one and she succeeded. While I was sleeping, she invited the sticker elves into the house and they left stickers with messages like “#1 Dad” and “Happy Father’s Day!” near my toothbrush, on my cell phone and sundry sites that I came across over the course of the day. She also gave me a number of carefully chosen gifts, including: 1) a book about World Cup history and a run-down of this year’s teams; 2) a book called About Me, which contains hundreds of fill-in-the-blank interview questions (I have since bought her one, too, so we are going to be an open book to each other); 3) a collection of baby sign language cards (point to your nose if you want to ask Emilio if he’s wet); 4) two $10 movie gift certificates (maybe this will inspire me to actually go to the movies some day . . .); 5) two white Tees from the Gap; 6) Sid Maier’s Civilization 4 (which, we learned this morning, is too powerful for my little ole' laptop since it requires a 1.2 Processor and mine is a 1.19 model, so I’m going to have to save it until we bring the next generation of computer power into our house); 7) 3 chocolate-chip cookies from Sweet Occasions; and 8) two children’s books which I have now read to Emilio: Papa! and Why Is Daddy Bald?. Jaime and María Rosa also sent me The Street and San Man’s Guide to Chicago Eats written by an employee of Chicago's Department of Streets and Sanitation so that I can further my studies of this town’s prole-friendly eateries (I now know that Wikstrom’s Deli on Clark Street has good meatloaf sandwiches). For breakfast, Mari served me a cheddar cheese omelet and while Emilio enjoyed his first siesta of the day, we made some initial headway on the “radical re-organization” of the house that we’ve been fantasizing about. For lunch the three of us trucked up to Evanston (see photo above on the right) and Emilio slept while Mari and I made our way through half a plate of nachos, half a country-fried steak, a corn cob, a slice of Texas toast, some mashed potatoes with gravy, some ribs, some grilled shrimp, some mixed veggies and—the piece de resistance—a chocolate molten cake. We would have down some more walking around Evanston, but cloudy skies began to sprinkle, so we headed back to the Foster Home, where I called Dad (that's him in the photo at left) to wish him a good one (the highlights of Dad's day: I-HOP breakfast and a new desktop computer!), and enjoyed a long stretch of play time in the bed with Emilio.

Yesterday, when I went to Potbelly in Evanston (my first visit in a month), Andy, the shift manager, wished me a happy father’s day and paid for my lunch!