Chatting, Camping, and Castles

 He stands on the chair because that means he can reach us and converse with us. He speaks another language, but we are catching on. He stands on the chair because he will be eye to eye with Amelia and  closer to the pop corn and crayons and salsa and glue sticks and math problems. If I turn away for an instant, he will climb on top and plop in the exact middle of it all. His curls dance around his head. It moves all day from here to there. He practices and plays and creates and converses. He matches and puzzles and chats and sings and dances with the thump of just one foot. He wakes up looking for his sister and then a chance to cuddle with daddy. A cuddle with William involves his body perpendicular to our necks as he stares towards the sky and chats away or rolls around a bit.
And he did quite a bit of rolling through the night on first William camping trip last weekend. It was camping at its finest. George Wilder is ready to set up the tent and Amelia built our fires. We found the perfect camping spot, which miraculously involved a bluegrass camp for the kids! 


A cowboy hat and a kilt. A spray bottle, some old chalk and some sea shells. An old Thanksgiving candle. A bouquet of yard flowers. A clump of rescued plants from the garden. Old bricks stacked into a two foot wall. An old piece of fencing. Two wooden chairs. 
A castle. 
A grand castle kept tidy and inviting. 
She doesn't stop caring for her space. It is just that, but it is hers and she has created it. I keep bringing her little pieces of this and that to give it some character, but her character is inviting enough. She journals about it. She has been dreaming about it. If we are not in the middle of a lesson or a meal or in out of the rain -- she is there. William toddles along behind her. He sits with her there and chats and throws the remnants of an old baseball Amelia found in the dirt right there in the castle! 
My garden is growing right beside the castle so I'll thin my lettuce and transplant the garlic and, of course, spray for bugs while she chats about her latest activities or invites me to have my hands painted with her new paint. 










Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Cattle Are Lowing

Image
We’d waited since February for her to calf. By November 20th, all eyes stayed on mama cow - Trahlyta. Her due date was close and we were more than ready. The waiting wrung our patience.  October was wet and boggy and Trahlyta looked sick. We discovered rotting flesh in her foot. Foot rot set in from standing on soggy ground day after day. George and the children tended to her around the clock as they cleaned out oozing infected sore and cared for her hooves. We’ve had her since she was a few days old. The children raised her. She’s part of our family. And, she’s our first cow to calf. She held the keys to our own dairy supply and to our tender hearts as we watched her stay under the weather. All we could do was wait and make sure she stayed healthy and it wasn’t as easy as we expected. But now, her hooves were healthy and her belly was swollen and we were waiting.  On the morning of the 24th, I rushed to the window at the first day light. Down by the creek, I saw Trahlyta and a red cal
Read more

Love Them. Feed Them. Talk To Them. The Rest Is Icing On The Cake.

Image
We've been homeschooling for ten years. At LEAST once a week I think that homeschooling is the worst possible thing on the planet. I look at my kids and think, "I've got nothin'!" It is scary. It is hard. How many hundreds of times have I called my extremely patient husband and yelled, literally screamed into the phone, "I CAN'T DO THIS!" There was a day, in the middle of a lesson that wasn't going well at all, that I walked out the back door, walked to the pool, jumped in fully clothed and yelled as loud as I could under the water. I got back out of the pool, calmly walked inside, changed my clothes and continued with the day feeling much relieved. George, my husband and biggest cheerleader - also a major part of our homeschooling life, is diligent to walk me off the cliff of homeschool despair. When I feel like I am failing our children, he offers me this morsel... Before I give you his advice, I would like to mention at this poi
Read more

Coffee Shop

Image
A little water. A little dirt. Buckets of imagination. They opened at 9:00 a.m. and didn't close the doors until the mud covered dishes were recollected and soaking at 5 p.m. The Best Food Whale Coffee.  Amelia made special food for the whales to eat. Their play was seasoned with the things we've read this week like the rules (The Code of Hammurabi) for the shop. School met them during their serving breaks. William loved playing along side them. He pulled weeds from the monkey grass for an hour straight and then played at their feet. He had a lot to say as well. The rain started in the late afternoon and George let them make us "real" coffee in the kitchen. A bike ride through puddles. Friday night pizza turned into Friday night spaghetti (I was out of flour due to "Waffle Friday" breakfast).  Whale Food Friday night movie -- "In Cold Blood" -- BBC's reptile documentary. Brilliant. Music turns
Read more