The Park and Pizza Grill Cheese with Papi
Eric was glad to wake up with hay fever two days later. He couldn't go to the lab like that, even if he had taken a Claritin tablet. But if he did take some Claritin, he would stop sneezing, his nose would stop running, his eyes would dry up and he could take his little girl to the park, let her burn of some of her energy and most important, get some quality time with daddy. Getting out of the house would be good for Chloe as well. Daddy decided it made more sense to give Chloe a bath when they got back from the park then before since she was her father's daughter and liked to get dirty. Alexx was coming over for a while that to have some "girl time" with her friend. He knew Calleigh would enjoy that.
At the playground Eric was reminded that a dad out with his child was a total "chick magnet." The two weren't there ten minutes when a woman had come up to Eric when Chloe was on the slide and said "she's so adorable. She must enjoy her time with daddy."
Eric smiled and lowered his head for a brief second. This was so an "ask me and my number is yours" line in disguise. He'd dropped enough of them in his ladies' man days. Hearing the line come from someone else, he couldn't believe how pathetic it sounded.
"She does," he replied. "She enjoys it when my wife takes her here, too."
That sent the woman in the other direction fast.
Before they headed home the two went to the grocery store to pick up the ingredients for pizza grill cheese, for Chloe that was ham and pepperoni. Eric called home to see if his wife wanted anything but Alexx had bought over gumbo so the answer was no. Neither Eric or Chloe had acquired a taste for the dish. In fact nobody could get Chloe to touch any seafood, not even frozen fish sticks. Kids usually liked those. Chloe insisted that anything fish smelled and couldn't be convinced otherwise by anyone, not even Elmo. When Chloe's doctor told them that they really should get the child to eat some fish and the parents told her how girl absolutely wouldn't the woman had suggested that a child get a letter from her favorite puppet. They tried that; Chloe's expression said "so what?" and her only reply was "If he likes it, Elmo can eat my fish, too!"
The parents knew the letter idea wasn't going to go anywhere with their three-year-old. She wasn't kind of child who would do something just because someone else did it.