well, it was spring. tonight i’m back to being cold after a couple weeks of glorious warmth. we’ve recently spent lots of afternoons playing hopscotch and just happily wandering around our 
neighborhood, on bike and on foot, watching cherry blossoms descend. as we walk, adah points everything out, and i try to address all the little and big questions. today’s favorites? "where does cinnamon come from?" and "what about babies? where do they come from?" sheesh, I didn’t expect the latter for a few more years. my, kid, how you’ve grown.
we've also spent a lot of time burying our knees in the garden, and scrounging up some hopefulness toward what's gonna grow. adah has an unending interest in what happens there. she has the whole garden map memorized and recites our list of plantings to anyone who'll listen. every time she walks out the door she checks on the 
bok choy to see how much it's grown, and she has the sweetest, most gentle way of watering fragile seeds. i love her love of the dirt and what comes of it. gardening is ordinarily magical, but doing it with kids is another story. the magic is palpable, forseeable, right there. so much glee and delight at the tiniest growth. who needs school when you can learn science and patience right outside your door? (this is coming from a de-schooling-minded teacher who is somewhat paradoxically sending her kid to preschool in the fall.) here is adah in her favorite gardening outfit:
a homemade hat made out of fabric scraps and held together with a butterfly-decorated clothespin; a turtleneck; undies; socks; sparkly red shoes. 'nough said.
***
on a different note, we just returned from a weekend away to eastern oregon. bug is better at driving the distances, but I keep learning that wherever we go, she needs about 48 hours to transition to that place before demonstrating much sanity or contentment. she was eager for our trip all week, but when we got there she was one heck of a whiny person. what is that about? leaving my hypothesis’ undocumented, this sadly seems to be the reoccurrence whenever we go somewhere so totally different than what’s she accustomed to, even if she wildy adores the person or people we’re visiting there. she finally perked up when, on the way home, we went out to dinner in hood river and stopped by an ice cream shack for dessert. since then she’s been back to her old self again: charming without respite, delightfully curious, and friggin funny.
in other news, since i haven’t written a thing in about a month, we’ve entered into a new stage of sleep drama. our independently sleeping from 6:30 p.m.to 7a.m. kid just developed a habit of a.) running downstairs with a huge grin just after we thought we had adult time for the rest of the evening and b.) waking up several times a night and crawling into bed with us. i think i’ve mentioned before that i think co-sleeping can be the sweetest thing if your kid gives you an inch or two to move (which she doesn’t), and if it’s possible to wake up together peacefully. i personally need a few minutes to quietly get centered in my day, and i miss out on this opportunity when we wake up together. the second I wake up, she’s awake, too, and the negotiations commence. this is why we’ve been walking her back to her bed at night, but it’s not really working. an hour later she’s back in our room with a “I missed you,” and this right here people, is why, when parenting, you have to have a few spare hearts handy. they just get broken so regularly.
No comments:
Post a Comment