Daddy Daughter Date Disaster

Last week, my son and I committed to a work project together with great success and a closer bond. This week, I decided a daddy-daughter date was in order. Sesame Street was in town and I decided that would be the perfect date for me and my 17 month old daughter. The evening started off good as we actually left on time, unfortunately that was the high point as it was all downhill from there.
When we arrived at the event, it suddenly started raining, not just raining, but downright pouring – the type of rain the Noah would be proud of. We ran to the auditorium to the ticket counter only to find out that the $12 tickets I had planned on were gone and only the $19 tickets remained.
We found our way to our seats only to find a family already in them. The show was just beginning and I didn’t want to ask them to move, so we found some open seats a few rows back. My daughter immediately grew tired of her shoes and threw them down, one landed several aisles up from us and hit a child with the family that stole our seats – I guess she was not quite as forgiving as her daddy. After apologizing and retrieving the shoe, we settled into our seats.
As the show started, my daughter became restless and wanted to get down to run the aisle, in the daddy’s tradition of poor judgment on such issues, I let her go. She was now in her socks (see story above about shoe tossing) and the floor was slippery so she immediately fell to the floor and bumped her head. This led to several minutes of very loud crying. Several people glanced back at us, giving us the dirty looks that say, “Can’t you keep that child quiet, we’re trying to watch the show.” One of those people was the patriarch of the family who stole our seats – I no longer had any sympathy for this family.
After she settled down, we started to watch the show, I took two photographs and suddenly she became restless again. She wanted down so she could run the aisle. I was wiser this time and would not allow it, but that only served to make her mad and she started screaming (see above story about the dirty looks and apply it to this point of the story as well). The next hour resembled a professional wrestling in which I was the unanimous loser. By the time Elmo came out to take his final bow, I was exhausted and ready to go.
You may be asking yourself at this point, why would you tell this story? What benefit did you or your daughter get from this “date”? Well, it didn’t seem like much fun to me either, but the next day, my daughter wanted me to hold her, read to hear, put her to bed, and even called out for me (not mommy) when she was in bed. This is really the first time any of this had happened at this level. It was like this long, frustrating, and difficult evening was a turning point in our relationship and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I hope this is the beginning of her becoming “Daddy’s Girl”.