“Oh, L!” is a common refrain.
the girl
Little Hands
Little hands are good at threading little beads onto little strings.
And with a young lady who sometimes has little patience, that’s no small feat.
The creative process has its demands, though, and if the motivation is there, the persistence and patience are not far behind.
Little hands are also good at opening big letters — big in their size and their significance.
“L, you have mail!” I call out as I enter. It seems her friend from school has written back.
Cartoon Time
We don’t want to be draconian with our rules, but television certainly must have certain limitations.
Thirty minutes a day.
Changes
It was sometime during second or third grade, I believe, that I first realized I wasn't seeing the same things my classmates were seeing. I'd somehow discovered that if I pulled on the corners of my eyes, I could see better. The teachers noticed, said something to my parents, and shortly after that, I had my first pair of glasses.
The Girl, it turns out, has the opposite problem: she's far-sighted.
The optometrist tells us it's something she could outgrow in a few years.
There are some things, however, she's likely to retrain for several years to come.
Gardening with the Girl
The first video that was entirely the Girl's idea.
Wants and Needs
Wants and needs are easily confused. Birds, for example, need water like all creatures. They don’t need berries, but their sweet flavor and high water content makes berries particularly attractive. Our recently-installed netting, however, frustrates our flying friends from fulfilling both wants and needs (though it does little for alliterative flourishes).
Flowers need attention, as do little girls (and, I would imagine, little boys, though we won’t be collecting anecdotal evidence for a few more weeks yet). And the best attention is often so seemingly slight: a pat, a hug, a kind word.
Spring Work
Spring is a time of expectation and rebirth. Or simply birth. With four weeks remaining until the Boy's due date, it's time to complete the final preparations: clothes need washing, cribs need assembling,
and final days as an only child need enjoying. We're all bursting at the prospect of a new member of the family, but I suspect that it won't take long for the Girl to start remembering how peaceful a Saturday afternoon could be when she was flying solo.
But there will be things only she can help with for several more years: her place as the special helper is secure for the foreseeable future.
So is mine.
Canvas
When your medium is chalk, the world is your canvas.
When your family includes a rambunctious five-year-old, escape is your standard.
Bike
We've been working on it for some time now: riding a bike. It's something K and I take for granted, one of the shared interests that helped in its own little way to solidify our relationship years ago.
The Girl didn't take to it immediately. She was scared of everything: going up hill; going down hill; turning; going straight; starting; stopping. It all scared her. "I was beginning to think she'd be like Babcia," K remarked today.
It's been a long time coming...
http://www.flickr.com/apps/video/stewart.swf?v=109786
Keeping and Surrendering
"Hey L, come help me take out the trash and recycling," I call as we finish up playing tag in the front yard, our new daily tradition. I pull into the laundry room the wicker basket we put our paper recycling in during the week and have her help me transfer the paper from it to the tub we'll take out to the street. And then she sees it: one of her drawings. There. In the recycling.
She gasps.
"What's this doing here?!" she asks, confused. "Are you throwing this away?"
I think fast and answer truthfully: "Well, we went through everything, and we're saving the best."
She looks at one of her crayon drawings and asks incredulously: "And this?!?"
Truthfully, it is quite good.
"Well, we can take that," I admit. "It's a good drawing."
"And this?!" she exclaims, pulling out another. "And my subtraction work?!"
Soon she's pulled out every single item of hers, each time accompanying the delicate removal with a gasp of shock and horror.
I explain to her that we can't keep everything, making a mental note to check with K before having the Girl help sort recycling again. Still, it's not a lesson she'll learn quickly: most of us tend to hold onto things more than we should.