Birthday Week - my girl turned 3

Around here, we don't celebrate a Birth'day'.  Oh no.  We have birthday WEEK! Cora turned 3 this year amidst a festival of beautiful Autumn leaves and gloriously sunny and yet cooler days.  Matt and I painted a mural on her walls that have long been languishing with just blue sky and green grass.  She asked for a tree.  She asked for flowers.  We gladly obliged.

She asked for a party with her favorite friends.  She asked for cake with carrots.  How can we deny her that?  And so, on a chilly and foggy morning, we packed up her requested pink tablecloth and carrot cake cupcakes and celebrated her in the park with her favorite friends.  Then the fog lifted and we could not have ordered a better day.  She wore her birthday crown (from The Creative Family - Amanda Blake Soule) and her new pink boots (ebay!).  She gathered 'bouquets of flowers' (ie. dried leaves) with her best gal pal, Suzi, and in general enjoyed everything that is delightful for a young girl on her third birthday.

I wrote in her journal a little love letter to her, all about her and who she is.  I put in all of the good and a little of the frustrating parts of her character because it's important to know who we are and who we were and where are roots are laid down deep.  My girl, with her beautiful imagination, her love of dancing and music, her shy face when I ask her to sing for anyone but me and Papa, her introverted tendencies, her temper, her passion for things, her meticulous nature that shines through in some areas, but not in how she cleans up her toys. My sweet Cora.  I'm sad and glad to see three arrive.  She's so very big, and yet so very small.  Happy birthday, my girl. 

The Wonder of Creative Play

In my last post, I talked about how wonderful it was to see the children at the campsite playing cooperatively with what they found and no one fought.  I also noticed that children who normally don't play together because of age difference were playing alongside each other and creating and using their brains!  It was pretty amazing.  Then Alice, one of the other moms at the camp out, linked to this amazing youtube video (on the free-range kids website) showing kids playing with 'found objects' in a school setting.  It made me so excited!  The other mothers in my local MOMS Club were practically giddy with the idea of setting up our own playpod for back yards, and for functions.  I am too!  Watch and enjoy the wonder of childhood imagination.  I may be raiding the scrap yard on Dickerson Road soon!

Camping with the Kids

 

So by now, dear reader, you know that I have a nearly 3 year old and a nine month old.  (I didn't post about it, but he is.  Just a few days ago.  Happy 9 months little man!)  So what in the world would possess me to take them camping?   Yes, you read that right.  Camping.  Well, read on.

Nearly a year ago, while still pregnant with Judah, I discussed the possibility of a camp out with a sweet friend, but winter and a newborn and then spring and summer passed by and I never got around to it.  But this lovely fall weather was coming and I wanted to camp!  So we planned it.  Our MOMS Club and I.  I wrote lists, I gathered, I grocery shopped, and packed and packed.  I asked for the sage advice of my mother who camped with us while my siblings and I were little.  And it would not all fit in the car!  And so I left the one thing that she said I had to bring (a pack n play) and later did the one thing she said not to do with toddlers (had an open fire).

In spite of all that, it was, by far the most glorious camping trip I have ever been on.  Perfect weather, gorgeous changing leaves, wonderful friends to help and work and cook together with, an unrelated (to me) gramma to hold the baby (thanks Bobci!), campfires, food cooked in the coals, a beautiful display of the Moon and Jupiter dancing across the night sky, gorgeous sticky and grubby kids wired on s'mores, making 'force fields' with their glow sticks, a baby who napped like he had been sleeping in a tent his entire life, hiking, fishing, kite flying, star gazing, and children playing together and no one fighting!  There were no toys to be declared 'Mine!', just more nature objects to be found, and compiled, discussed, and examined.  I wish I had taken a picture of Cora's 'secret garden' aka a beautiful leaf sculpture she made upon arriving.  But I was too busy pitching a tent in the fading light.

The Geek, bless his non-outdoorsy self, joined us for one of the two nights but had it pretty rough with no extra warm clothes and getting crowded off the air mattress by the baby and me.  Then he had to drive back to town to work the next morning, poor guy!  We discussed how to make it better next time.  At least he's still willing to try! 

Tired and slightly sunburnt, I drove the short trip back home from Montgomery Bell State Park and unpacked the car.  Cora protested, "I don't want to go inside.  I'm gonna stay out here in this (camp) chair."  And why not?  She had been outside for three days!  It felt strange to me to be inside again too, where dirt suddenly made my house dirty.  Cora brought home a "box of nature" to show her Papa, including sticks, leaves, rocks, moss and some cold chunks of coals that she got from somewhere.  (Hopefully not the fire pit!)  At dinner she declared that she was going to sleep outside on the porch.  I understood what she meant.  Had we had a fenced in back yard, I would have pitched the tent back there and had another night under the stars.  I learned a few lessons about camping with kids, but we will be doing it again.  Hopefully in the Spring!

Now

 NOW

The longed-for summer goes;
Dwindles away
To its last rose,
Its narrowest day.

No heaven-sweet air but must die;
Softlier float
Breathe lingeringly
Its final note.

Oh, what dull truths to tell!
Now is the all-sufficing all
Wherein to love the lovely well,
Whate’er befall.

~ Walter de la Mare (1873-1956), English writer, most famous for his ghost stories and children’s poetry

The chill of the morning persists each and every day.  The summer is quickly flown away.  My babies grown so brown and tall, or so very pink and round as the case may be. The sun moves in its course (or appears to) as we tilt toward the coming cold.  I measure it in morning sunbeams on my bedroom wall and the precise moment that 'suntime' arrives and wakes my darling girl, who must, in turn, wake me.  Before chores and duties and breakfast and the other pressing demands of the day call us from our bed, we hold our sweet babes and read and snuggle under flannel sheets and giggle at the blessings we possess.  Sweet moments in taking time to "love the lovely well."