Oh What Do You Do in the Summertime?

Here in Wendover, we have had some HOT weather for awhile. The temperature outside already approaches 90 degrees at 10:00 each morning and the highs all week (for several weeks) sit just between high 90s and low 100s. Unfortunately, the heat in our apartment feels oven-like as well because we have no cooling system.

So to survive over the last month, we have made frequent pilgrimages to the local pool. The kids have swimming lessons weekday mornings and then we return as a family after naptime in the afternoons. The kids have had a great time and we have managed to stay reasonably cool for a portion of the day!


When we get out of the pool and are cold from the wind chilling our wet skin, we all lay down on the cement to dry. Even the girlie drops to the ground as soon as I wrap her towel around her shivering limbs. I love seeing my sweet family lined up on the concrete to dry. The damp cement smell fills my mind with memories of swimming with cousins at Grandma Jody and Grandpa Ray's house years ago.

Swimming lessons have been wonderful for the boys. They have been in a class together during both sessions and this session they are the only kids in their class. The close attention has really helped them progress and become more confident in the water. Once in awhile I worry that they are a little too confident in their aquatic abilities when they appear as though they might drown, but they assure me that they are swimming and are just fine.

Elizabeth just loves the water and has learned so much in her aqua-babies swim class. For this class, a parent is in the water with the child and is the one helping them bob under the water, blow bubbles, kick, float, and jump in. Joseph participated for the last session and I am the one participating this session. The reason we really love these lessons for her is the one-on-one time we get for swimming with her while very few people are around. Our own children and other children often make that difficult when we swim in the afternoon.

Invisible Spiders

Do you ever wonder what your children do when you're not watching? Well I do. And the other day I found out. I was working in the office when I heard the following vocalizations coming from down the hall and around the corner:

"Sniff . . . Sniff Sniff . . . Sniffffffffffffffff!"
Austin's voice: "I sniffed one up!"
Matthew's voice: (giggling) "let's get him!"

Then I heard the sound of an exaggerated exhaling of breath, much like what you hear when someone is blowing out candles on a birthday cake.

I decided that I had to see this, so I crept down the hall and peeked my head around the corner into the kitchen. I got there just in time to witness a repeat of the process.

"Sniff . . . Sniff . . . I sniffed one up!"
"Let's get him!"




Much exhaling of breath

Me: "What are you guys doing?"

Boys: "We're sniffing up spiders and then blowing them!"
Me: "Oh"

Why didn't I guess that from the beginning?

How can you tell that you have a Raggamuffin for a child?

She looks like this

I'm just saying . . .

Poems, anyone?

The other day we were all driving in the car, meditating upon our own private thoughts, when the silence was broken by a dreamy sigh from the back of the car, followed by Austin's wistful voice - "speak poetry."

After our laughter subsided, Audrey and I just had to ask where the inspiration for this most recent non sequitur came from. It turns out that we have A. A. Milne to thank for this one. Check out "Winnie-the-Pooh," chapter VII, some time.

To Be a Child

I love how childrens' minds work (not that I pretend to remotely understand them - it's just that the outward manifestation of whatever is going on in there is often so amusing). It's better than television.

For example, consider this scene . . .

To the mind of an adult, especially an overwhelmed adult who is in the middle of a move (this is from 6 weeks ago), this might appear to be just an 11' by 7' room packed wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling with moving boxes filled with our stuff, for which there is not enough room in our apartment. If that's what you thought it was, don't feel too bad, because that's what I thought it was too. We were both wrong.

To be sure, I knew that there was a tiny empty space in the middle. But that's all it was to me - an empty space, created so we could squeeze in there and hunt for boxes on occasion.

To the mind of a child, however - a mind unfettered by such mundane concerns as "where are we going to put all this junk?" - it is evidently much more.

Apparently what this space really is is a home appliance repair shop . . .

and a library, complete with easy-chairs. Who knew?

Matthew has clearly learned home-repairs by observing his father's technique - first you select the proper tools for the job;

then you carefully measure the item to be repaired;

gently take it apart;

and lovingly attempt to put it back together.

Finally you bang it with a hammer in frustration!

(I love that throughout the entire "repair" process, Austin remains thoroughly engrossed in his Mother Goose poems - heedless of the racket going on at his elbow)

As I stand here and contemplate these towers of our preoccupation, my frenzied eye falls upon my children, obliviously absorbed in this world that they have created out of our junk-heap. Today it is an appliance repair shop and a library - perhaps tomorrow a pirates' cove and a castle rampart. For just a moment I am transported back to a long-ago time when I, too, could effortlessly create magic out of chaos, untouched by the cares of the day.

Now don't misunderstand me - I love being an adult, and life with my Audrey just gets better and better each day. However, there are infrequent moments when, just for an instant, by a word, a touch, or (as in this case) just a glimpse of their quiet absorption in their own unreachable world, my children wrench from me the brief petition - "oh to be a child again!"