I'm looking for comments on the begining, as well as critiques on the whole rewrite (which should be ready in a day or two). Mostly in this begining, I want to see how the switch to present tense is going.

Thanks, and here is the first 13:

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Forty-eight and a half

The dreams are always the same. It is a warm summer morning and only a few clouds dance overhead showing little hope in providing any shade. On a nearby park bench a mother is tending to a child in a stroller while two older siblings bicker at one another. Their daddy appears with ice cream cones and soon the shouting is gone. A man with a microphone says he can guess my birthday. I don’t know how he did it, but somehow he guessed it was today. I look up at my daddy afterwards and he gave me a wink.

“You sure you want to do this, pumpkin?” he asks me and I give him a grin. We are now standing next to giant duck with a sign hanging around its neck that reads, “You must be as tall as me to ride this ride.”

“Look at that. That duck is forty eight inches tall, and you can’t be but forty eight and a half! You’re getting to be such a big girl.”

I was confused about how the narrator related to the story. She said there were 2 siblings, but later I *think* she identified herself as one of them. I'd rather she identify her role up front.