Obsessive Attentive readers may have noticed my absence from DadWagon over the past week or so. But, of course, this is normal—I’m always off on some ridiculous trip or another.

This time, however, I was gone for a mere six days. But in that brief span of time, I seem to have missed a lot. Sasha is, almost all of a sudden, a full-fledged toddler. She’s talking more than ever (though somewhat incomprehensibly) and has a handle on her world, a confidence, that I’ve never seen before. At daycare, I’m told, she’s now one of the three oldest kids in the class; several others having aged out (or upstairs), and Sasha refers to the younger newcomers, who cry and crawl, as “babies.”

Luckily, my usual fear—that she’ll forget who I am—was unfounded. We had a wonderful morning of reading Afar magazine, spinning around, eating apples, although she’s still especially attached to her mother. As Jean put it, “You’re like the boyfriend who sometimes comes and spends the night.”

Hrm. I’ll take what I can get.