With the Stay At Home Dad Experiment moving into a less intense phase, Abby and I won’t be spending as much time together, so we’re hitting some of our favorite spots this week. We headed down to the River Market to ride the streetcar but the a sign at the streetcar stop said they wouldn’t be running until further notice. Bummer.

So went over to check on the Junction Bridge to see how it is since they reopened it. It’s the same. Afterward we hit the riverfront playground. I always thought the fountain next to the play area was just a fountain. We hadn’t been down there since it warmed up and so hadn’t seen the fountain operating. Turns out the fountain is actually part of the playground. There’s a big button you push to make the water jets come on. Abby is really big on fountains now. Last week Gina let her wade around in a public fountain and now when we leave to go somewhere Abby asks if there will be a fountain there.

On our way downtown, we drove through Mount Holly Cemetery, which, as luck would have it, has a big fountain, and Abby wanted to get in it. I explained how her wading in that fountain would be disrespectful of the dead. When we got closer she saw a bunch of birds frolicking in the cooling waters and asked why it was OK for the birds to get in the fountain. Then followed a long conversation about the habits of birds and how they differ from people.

So when she saw the kids playing in the water thing at the playground she about lost her mind. She ran down and stripped off her shirt and shoes and started to take off her shorts. I explained how total public nudity is bad manners. She said, “But I want to be naked.”

When we went to Nashville awhile back we drove through a swampy area and in my desperation to entertain Abby on the long drive, I sang to her “The Legend of Woolly Swamp,” an old Charlie Daniels song. She spent the next month asking me to sing “the swamp song” to her. Then she would quiz me about why the various parts in the story of the song happened. As in, “Why did the ghost of Lucious Clay get up and walk around, Daddy?”

Since she likes the song so much I decided to take her to a real swamp she could get up and walk around in: the Lorance Creek Natural Area south of Little Rock. The swamp was swarming with gnats and it wasn’t really that interesting. On the way back to the truck she fell in the parking lot and scraped her knee and the palm of her hand. The scrapes bled a little and apparently hurt. She was done for the day. I had to carry her into the house and put polysporin and a Band-Aid brand bandage on the wound. After that she just wanted to sit pitifully on the couch and watch TV.