Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 84071 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84071 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
“Chop-chop, baby girl.” I kiss her nose before closing the door and getting into the front seat. I turn on the car and back out of the driveway and head toward her daycare.
“Daddy,” Meadow calls me, “can we listen to Encanto?”
I inwardly groan at this request. “You want me to put on Encanto?”
“‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno,’” she coos in her sweet voice while she looks out the window.
“Great,” I say as I touch the screen in the middle of the console, pulling up Spotify and clicking Meadow’s playlist. In a matter of seconds, the music fills the car. It feels like fingernails down the chalkboard when the song starts to sing about Bruno. I pull into the daycare parking lot, putting the car in park, and shutting it off so the music will stop. I swear my brain sighs with relief when it happens. I was happy we were over the “Baby Shark” thing the first couple of times, but now I’m stuck on Bruno.
I open the driver’s door before opening the back door and unbuckling her seat belt and grabbing her backpack. “Do you want to take your backpack in, or do you want me to carry it?”
I always ask her because there is nothing quite like a little tantrum of her wanting to carry in the bag and then a full-blown tear fest, all this after I carried the bag into the daycare. She turned four, and her independence came crashing into her. She had to try to do everything herself. And I mean everything, from picking her clothes to brushing her own hair. It was a learning curve for me more than anything.
“Me,” she states as I pick her up and place her on the ground and hand her the backpack.
“Do you want me to help you?” I ask her. Another thing I have to do because, again, no one needs to go through the tears on a Monday morning.
“I can do it,” she says the four words I hear all day long. The words literally tattooed on my brain. I stand here for a second, watching her grab the bag from me and slipping her arm through one loop before trying to get the second one in.
I give her a second to figure it out before I speak up, hoping to speed up the process, and ask her, “Can I help you?” Thankfully she nods her head, giving me the go-ahead, so I pull it up for her. “There you go.”
She holds out her hand for me to grab as we walk into the daycare. I put in the code for the door before opening it and hold it open for her to walk through. “Dad, tonight can we have pasta?” she asks me as we walk down the carpeted hallway. Wooden cubbies line the right side of the wall with hooks under them, some with jackets already hanging, and a long wooden bench. We pass two classrooms before Meadow stops by her hook. “Can we have the pasta with the chicken and the cheese?” She slips the backpack off her shoulders, and it lands on my foot.
“Sure,” I agree, picking her bag up and hanging it on her hook with her name under it. “Maybe we can go for a walk to the park after dinner,” I tell her, and she jumps up and down.
“Yeah, I can do the monkey bars,” she announces, walking toward the blue classroom door. The bottom half of the door is closed, with a picture of a dragonfly on it, while the top half of the door is open.
“Good morning, Meadow,” Melanie, her educator, greets her as she opens the door. “How are you this morning?”
“Good,” Meadow answers as I squat down next to her.
“Have a good day, baby,” I say softly, putting my hands on her hips.
“I’m not a baby,” she reminds me. “I’m four.”
“How could I ever forget?” I reply as she comes over and kisses my lips. “Have a great day, big girl.”
“Bye, Daddy,” she says, right before she dashes off to the table where they are doing some sort of craft activity that will end up on my fridge.
I stand and close the door, seeing her sitting down talking to the little girl beside her, before I turn and walk out of the daycare. I take a huge deep inhale as I step into the heat and head for my car.
Opening the door, I get in, starting it right away before reaching for my seat belt. The phone rings as soon as I put the car in drive. The Bluetooth picks it up, so I press the connect button on the middle screen.
“Hello,” I answer, not even knowing who is calling. “Caine Griffin.”
“It’s so annoying when you do that,” my brother, Nash, gripes as soon as I stop talking, making me laugh.