What fun thing are we going to do today?

The burden. The re-frame. The opportunity.

I’m anticipating the question with a mixture of pride and dread.

As the first one awake on a crisp and sunny weekend morning, I’m trying to squeeze in as much rare low-wattage time as possible before anyone else descends the stairs.

It’s a time to read the things I want to read, have some quiet but important thoughts, enjoy a cup of coffee or two before the demands of the day begin.

There’s more time for all of it on a weekend, but that cuts both ways: More time to relax, more time to make a plan, more time to think about what to do next, and certainly more time for fun.

What fun thing are we going to do today?

That is the question I am waiting for from our kids. Specifically it has been coming daily and inevitably from our 5-year-old son. Our 8-year-old daughter will ask, too, but she’s not as consistent nor as needy. Our oldest daughter more or less expects there to be at least one fun thing every day, but she is almost 11 and therefore less dependent on us to provide it. After she wakes up, she’ll be packing for an overnight sleepover that certainly will contain multitudes of fun.

She and the 5-year-old would probably prefer there to be 47 fun things every day, but they will accept nothing fewer than one.

It’s 8:12 a.m. when the 5-year-old bounds down the stairs. I’ve been up for about 45 minutes. He asks immediately if he can play Mario Kart on the Nintendo Switch, his engine going from 0 to 60 mph in just a few seconds.

Then he wants something to drink and something to eat. The former is easy to solve (raspberry lemonade). The latter often consists of me naming eight things he could have, him saying no to each one, then a minute later saying he wants either the first thing I mentioned or the only thing we don’t have (thankfully, it’s the first one in this case and I make him a waffle).

We’ve reached a tenuous harmony, and I go back to my coffee and morning ease. A few minutes later, though, he puts down the video game controller. He’s done playing the Switch and he wants to know:

What fun thing are we going to do today?

There’s the pride and dread, mixing together.

The pride: We have conditioned our children to expect a life that is not mundane, to treat every day as a possibility, to want to get out and explore and try new things.

The dread: Damn it, this is exhausting. I am tired. This was a weekend ago, when I still wasn’t feeling great (things are much better now), but trying to explain things like that to a 5-year-old is complicated.

I try sneaking one past him.

“We’re going to the gym later,” I offer, hopefully. “You’ll get to play with your friends there and have fun.”

“The gym doesn’t count,” he says, which is what I know he will say.

I try a mixture of stalling and reasoning.

“I’m not sure what we are doing today,” I say, which is true. “And also, I hate to break it to you, but not every single day of your life is going to have something fun. Sometimes a day is just a day.”

What am I saying? This goes against everything I believe. But I’m also tired and I just want a minute. I just can’t handle a commitment or expectations in this exact moment.

“We’re going to a birthday party tomorrow,” I mention to him. “That’s going to be fun.”

“That’s tomorrow,” he reminds me.

“Maybe we could take Ollie (our pug) for a little walk?” I say, wondering if that qualifies as a fun thing.

“Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo,” he replies. “I want to go to an arcade.”

“Buddy, I’m sorry but we are not going to an arcade today,” I say. “Maybe I can bring all of you to a playground later.”

He’s fixated on the arcade for a minute, but then he shifts.

“The big playground. The green and blue one,” he says, carrying on a tradition by which all playgrounds are named by their colors except the really small one we often drive by on our way home that is simply known as “the sad playground.”

“Probably not that one,” I tell him. “But we have to go pick something up down in Apple Valley. We could stop at the Lebanon Hills playground after that.”

“What’s Apple Valley?” he says, even though we have been there dozens of times.

“It’s a city next to Eagan,” I tell him.

“No, that’s Minnesota,” he says.

Mercifully, his sister comes down the stairs into the living room at that moment.

“Can I watch TV,” she asks, immediately. “YouTube?”

“No YouTube,” I say, weary but happy to change the subject. “Just watch something normal that has a plot for a while.”

I get up to leave the room.

“Where are you going?”

“The bathroom.”

“Where’s mom?”

“She was asleep but I think she’s upstairs taking a shower now.”

“Can you get me some milk?”

“Can’t you get it for yourself? You’re 8 now.”

“Yeah, but you’re already up.”

I bring her the milk and head toward the bathroom, knowing only this at the moment:

This is not the fun thing that we are going to be doing today.

---

“OK guys, here’s the deal,” I announce later to all three kids. “If you get ready now, we’ll have about an hour at the playground before we need to get ready for our other things tonight.”

Everybody has either had lunch or been offered lunch and declined because they are too full of snacks. My wife is working on homework. I’m ready for an outing, and she certainly could use a quiet house. Our 10-year-old is getting picked up at 4 p.m. for the birthday sleepover. The rest of us need to leave around 5. But there’s time now.

“Which playground?” I am asked by all three, even though I have explained this already.

“The one at Lebanon Hills,” I say, a little frustrated. You know, the one where you walk down the hill.”

“The one where we met that girl that I played with that one time,” our 8-year-old asks, and even though this is very vague I know exactly what she means.

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to go to that one,” she says.

“I WANT TO GO TO THE BIG GREEN AND BLUE ONE,” the 5-year-old yells.

“I know, let’s ride our bikes down to the playground at my school,” our oldest chimes in.

“You guys. We have to run a quick errand in Apple Valley. Then we can stop at the playground by Lebanon Hills. This is what we have time for,” I say. “Let’s go. Everybody should go to the bathroom if they need to, then put on shoes, sweatshirts and hats. We need to leave in 10 minutes.

That last part is a little bit of a lie. We really need to leave in about 20 minutes.

“Can I bring my tablet in the car?” the 8-year-old asks.

“No. It’s not that far. Let’s just leave it here.”

“If she’s bringing her tablet, can I bring the Nintendo?” the 5-year-old asks.

“Guys. We don’t need technology. We’re not going very far.”

“Can we listen to songs in the car?” the 10-year-old asks.

“Absolutely.”

“Can we skip your turn?”

“Fine. Just get ready.”

We go, and they have a great time. They spend about 5 minutes at the actual playground and about 45 minutes throwing increasingly heavy objects onto the half-frozen shore of the adjacent lake. They can play at a playground almost any day, but this is something new.

Small branches. Large rocks. Boulders. Half of a fallen down tree.

They get completely muddy, and two of them inadvertently step into the freezing water, yet they are somehow unfazed.

I can barely get them home and into clean clothes in time for what comes next. But nobody is complaining. We have done one fun thing, and they know it.

---

Sunday is the aforementioned birthday party. That’s a layup. They might ask what other fun thing we are going to do that day, but there is no pressure. We have done one fun thing already.

---

Monday is a school day, but that usually does not change the expectation. It only compresses the time. My wife has class at night. Our oldest daughter heads to a friend’s house right after school. The two youngest are at home and they seem fairly low energy. Maybe we just won’t do anything?

I know that’s probably not true. And secretly, I don’t want it to be true. I’m just like them, typically, always wanting to do something even when I’m tired.

5:13 p.m.: “Dada! We haven’t done anything today. What fun thing are we going to do?” our 5-year-old howls.

“Buddy, I think we should just take Ollie for a walk. That’s about all we have time for.”

Then I pull a classic dad move and pretend as though this has already been decided and we are onto the next question. “What do you want to ride: Your bike or your scooter?”

He makes a pouty face. But then he says: “Scooter.”

Soon I am outside on a perfect late afternoon/early evening with the 5-year-old and 8-year-old (and the pug).

“Which way are we going?” they ask as they zoom around on their scooters.

“I think we’re just going around the block the long way. Like we do when we go on our frog walks.”

“Nooooooooooooooooooooo,” the 5-year-old wails. “I want to go to Lebanon Hills.”

“I just want to go around the block,” the 8-year-old says.

Now we need a quick compromise and a calculation. What time is our 10-year-old getting home? I send her a text on her watch.

“How about we go to Lebanon Hills but we don’t go all the way around. Just far enough to see if there are any animals by the bridge.”

The 8-year-old rolls her eyes. The 5-year-old tries to complain. But we start heading that way.

We hustle across the busy road and down to the paved trail that goes around the lake. Instead of making our customary right turn we go left. Our pug is confused, but mostly he’s just pulling as hard as possible because he can’t stand it when the kids are up ahead of him.

We reach the bridge. I yell to the kids and snap the picture at the top of this post. “Look, there’s a muskrat!”

Our 5-year-old strains to see it but cannot and gets very upset. But then it climbs out of the water onto a part of the lake that’s still frozen and starts taking a big drink.

The 5-year-old can see it clearly now and is thrilled.

“There’s another one!” he shouts. “Two muskrats. And another one! Three muskrats. I’m going to tell everyone at school tomorrow that I saw three muskrats!”

I get a text back. Our oldest daughter won’t be home for an hour, AND she is eating dinner at her friend’s house, AND she is getting dropped off.

This is all amazing news. We take our time on the way back, pausing to examine a dead squirrel, and there is still light when we get home.

Our next door neighbors are in their driveway shooting baskets with their two kids, roughly the same age as our two youngest.

Our kids stay outside for at least another 30 minutes playing basketball and kicking around a soccer ball.

I’m reminded that in a month or two they will be inundated (in a good way. I think) with spring and summer outdoor activities. Soccer. Softball. Swimming lessons. Gymnastics. Maybe they won’t ask me about fun things so much when they are busier?

I kind of hope that’s true, and I kind of hope it isn’t.

For now, this is really nice.

---

Thursday is my wife’s other class night. Our oldest daughter has gymnastics. I mention to the two younger kids that after we drop her at gymnastics I’d like to go to the gym, something we do a lot on Thursdays.

They start immediately complaining and campaigning to go to the big green and blue playground instead, which we had learned exactly a week ago in this scenario is only about three minutes from the gymnastics gym and is a perfect way to spend a little more than an hour while their older sister is training.

Last week it was about 65 degrees, and I said sure. This week it is about 44 degrees. But it’s sunny, and they know that I’ve been bragging about how much more daylight we are getting now that the clocks have changed.

What they don’t know is that I have just read a fascinating Minnesota Star Tribune story about local musician Shannon Curfman and her complicated feelings about Kid Rock. There are a lot of takeaways, but the part where she is describing how he lives is sticking with me.

“Monday through Friday, he’s in bed by 9 and he’s up by 2 or 3 in the morning. He works out. Hikes. He plays pickleball every day. He listens to books. He’s so structured,” she said. “He’s taking a mid-day nap by the time we get into the studio to record. Someone that is so creative cannot sit still. He records every single day. He writes every single day. He lives like two days in every single day. It’s just unreal to me.”

He lives like two days in every single day.

Damn it, I love this. This is more or less how I want to live, and though I’m sure I have not said this to our kids they surely see it and feel it.

This is how they want to live, too.

“Fine,” I tell them. “But I wanted to do a workout. So you need to let me go to the basement for 30 minutes right now so I can ride the bike and take a shower before we go. And I need you to stay upstairs so I can have some quiet.”

They agree, even though I (correctly) guess that they will join me in the basement about six minutes into my ride.

I watch the last five game minutes (30 actual minutes) of an NCAA men’s basketball tournament game as I ride, then I hustle into the shower and away we go.

We’re going to do a fun thing today. We’re going to try to do a fun thing every day, even if spring break is right around the corner and we have the equivalent of 10 Saturdays in a row.

We’re going to have two days in one day when we can.

Because really, what else is there?