Thursday, October 11, 2012

Taking the Long Way

Ivory is curled up in my bed fast asleep.
The last thing she said to me before she closed her eyes was: "After my nap, can I have some yogurt."
All I heard was:"NAP".  She wants to nap! Oh, Yogurt.  "Yeah, you can have some yogurt."

Sylvan in bopping around the dining room, pulling out random toys and singing to himself.
He fell asleep in the bike trailer, and despite of my best efforts, he is chipper and awake.

It took us almost two hours to get sorted and out of the door this morning.
There was the crying while hair brushing.
The massive melt down while trying to put on gloves.  The pink ones were to bulky for bike handle holding.  The finger gloves to difficult to slip on and the green ones - too green.  WAY TO GREEN! All of these reasons, of course, requiring tears and a knee buckle to floor level.
My solution: NO GLOVES!  No gloves for anyone.

Ivory finally straddled her bike, and I mine.  Our mission for the day: to ride our bikes to the grocery story.  We pushed our bikes up and over the Scott Street bridge, coasted down the other side and suddenly everything was fine.

Two braids dangled down her back ahead of me, and she singing on the top her lungs:  "Platypus, Platypus, Platypus!"  She didn't stop singing until we got home again, adding new lines here and there.  "Platypus lives in the water..  Platypus, Platypus, Platypus...  Platypus lays eggs...  Platypus, Platypus, Platypus."  She stops.  "Mom? What do platypus eat."
"I don't know.  Maybe they eat fish or little plants."
"Platypus, Platypus. What do you eat?  I eat fish, I eat fish, I eat fish."  (Platypus don't eat fish by the way.  They eat worms, and larva, and shrimp, and crayfish. But, we can read all about Platypus when she wakes up.)

I will admit that I had a few moments of desperate begging: "Ivory please.  Stop. Stop the whining.  The  crying."  I had a few moments of desperate bargaining, of threatening: "If  you can't stop crying we can't go on our bike ride."  A serious moment of self doubt: "Is this because I took her out of school?" We almost didn't go anywhere.

I did take her out of school.  Sometimes I feel a little guilty, but most of the time I feel that my decision was justified.  Not being in school means that we can make even a trip to the grocery store an adventure.  We rode our bikes (2.4 miles each way) along the river, across bridges, in the sunshine and autumn breeze.   We had a picnic of apples, bananas and cheese and bumped into friends while I sipped a tiny cup of coffee.

Now she is fast asleep.
Sylvan and I are going to attempt to make some licorice candy.
The play dough making date Ivory and I were supposed to have while Sylvan napped will have to wait until later.





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