Here's something really delicious about winter weather in Austin. The sun filters down pleasantly all morning, you cavort jacketless in your yard while the temperate breezes whisper, you do multiplication drills in the driveway while bouncing a ball with your son and keeping an eye on the girls who are climbing all over your car. You cast a pitying mental eye upon those who are imprisoned in their northern homes by the merciless cold.
Then, some time in the afternoon, the wind picks up ("I really MEAN IT this time!") and literally, within thirty minutes, in the space of time it takes to, say, run in and out of Hobby Lobby, the temperature drops ten, twenty degrees. You yearn to gather your young and hurry into the warm, glowing house and pour homemade cookies and hot chocolate down their gullets to warm them in more ways than one, and so you do.
That happened today, but a few other things did too. Whether or not you have kids, do you ever wonder what a snapshot, or maybe a scrapbook page, of an ordinary day would look like? When Ian was a toddler, full of brilliant and quirky sayings and mannerisms, I was SO SURE that I would remember every single one of them, as if meteors can leave indelible trails in the night sky. Now I know better -- I can't even remember what that brilliant thing was a few hours later when recounting it to Tim. "There was SOMETHING she said, and it was SO FUNNY -- what WAS it?"
So before I forget, from today with the small folk who populate my house and are changing too fast, a couple snapshots.
-- They have this new game which I'll call "Oh My Gosh!" They'll look at each other and say, for example, in the most shocked voices they can muster, "OH MY GOSH!!! You ... you ... have TWO EARS!" Then they all collapse into hysterical cackling. You'd be amazed at how long this game remains funny. To them. :-)
-- I'm putting Caroline to bed, and tonight it's just not working. The lady doth protest too much, and though I've done the bedtime routine, she tries to run out of the room just as Ian scampers in. Noticing my edginess, Ian takes over and uses some chest-thumping trick to turn her tears to giggles. "Was Mommy a little grumpy with you?" he asks soothingly. "Don't worry, she doesn't mean it." Seeing I'm not needed, I'm heading out of the room when he informs me that HE will put her to bed, "after we read stories galore."
Gentle readers, what are your snapshots from your ordinary day? I'd love to hear a few!
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2 comments:
I have this experience every day with my 19 first graders. I cringe and smile graciously while telling their parents, "I can't remember" while attempting to chronicle the significant events of their child's one's day. I have a few who are particularly observant and witty (without yet knowing it, of course) and I kick myself when I can't remember their one-liners on the drive home. I like to use the anecdotes I can remember to open my bi-monthly class parents' meeting. It's a nice ice breaker.
If I remember a good one, I'll try to share it.
Rhoda
Aw. IT's sort of sad to think of all of the oceans of cuteness that we WILL forget by the time they grow up, but my mother assures me that it's actually a protective mechanism to help us surivive it. Okely dokely.
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