Daddy is so proud

Olivia loves to bowl. Or, at least, she loves the IDEA of bowling. It's really weird.

She knows that Daddy goes to his bowling league once a week. When he's absent from the house on that evening, she makes sure to ask me 100 times over..."Daddy, Bowl?" Yes, Daddy is bowling. Yes, he's still bowling. OK, nothing has changed since you asked me two minutes ago. Bowling, yes, that is where Daddy is.

On New Year's Eve, we took Olivia bowling for the first time, and she seemed to like it well enough. I don't think you can call what she did "bowling". She pushed a bowling ball down a ramp that was facing in the direction of pins. But she was happy doing it.

Lately, she's been talking about bowling a lot. It's like she's obsessed. She wanders around saying "Bowl, Bowl?" When we acknowledge that we know what she's saying, she runs to the front closet, drags out Daddy's bowling bag (which contains more than 30 lbs of bowling equipment) and then proceeds to try to open the zipper and empty the contents. If she is unsuccessful, she gets desperate and starts crying, "Bowl! Bowl!" with a whiny tone to her voice that usually means, "Somebody get these balls out of this bag immediately or I'm going to have a major tantrum."

We usually concede and let her play with the heavy balls, which means pushing them around the carpet.

Yesterday we decided to take her bowling after Church. She had a blast. I honestly don't know what the fascination is all about. She likes rolling the ball down the ramp, but I think she enjoys watching other people bowl even more. Or maybe she's just determined to do something that Daddy likes to do because, people, she adores her Daddy.

Last night, Olivia was wheezy and today she's snotty, and it looks like we are starting our next round of winter crud. She is tired and grumpy and pretty miserable. And all she has wanted to do this morning is drag bowling balls out of the closet. Her whiny plea for bowling is more desperate than usual.

So here's my line of thinking...she's sick, she wants comfort, Daddy provides comfort, Daddy's at work, she wants to be closer to Daddy, she thinks of bowling, she's obsessed with the bowling equipment. Irrational, yes, but it's sweet to think that she loves her Daddy so much that she wants to do stuff that reminds her of him.