There is that saying that kids keep you on your toes. Oh yes they do. You can't tell what their next words, actions, ideas will be. You can't prepare yourself. Much of your play with them is reactive: ultimately, they hold the reigns.
I was thinking about that today as I scrambled to move stuff around to accommodate a sudden switch of Snowdrop's school Zoom time -- from work space, to a select play spot. For that, she chose a hidden corner of the farmhouse where there stands a potty. It's waiting for its next user and then I suppose the yet-to-be-born user. I quickly grabbed the little seat out of camera range, but it was no use. When asked to describe her play space, Snowdrop looked around and noted that there was a sudden conspicuous absence of the potty. I had to smile: perhaps her teacher and class playgroup think that this child's one play space at the farmette is in the bathroom. (In fact, there is no bathroom on the ground floor here at all and I've preferred keeping a potty handy rather than having the kids scrambling up the and down the steep slippery steps when the urge strikes.)
If you keep an ear to the classroom conversation, you can pick up interesting tidbits about kids' lives (including which families do and which do not take mitigating measures against the spread of the virus). An insight into private spaces, exposed now because the kids are home rather than in the classroom.
I had a few extra minutes for idle thoughts because the move of kids from home to farmhouse came a little later than expected. The teacher's early morning session lasted too long and there was no time to do the transfer before the next one. So Ed and I lingered over breakfast...
And then finally the kids came, insisting this time on using the refurbished front entrance!
They plunge into play with such vigor that you'd think they hadn't been around toys for years.
All this, of course, punctuated by Snowdrop's school sessions. I listen in a little and I hear others doing some math counting. But Snowdrop is quiet. I whisper -- shouldn't you join in? She gives an impish smile and whispers back -- I'm mouthing the numbers so that it looks like I'm saying them with the others! She has invented a way to keep herself amused. Didn't we all do that in school...
There is a moment where the kids do some form of relaxation yoga-ish exercises. I like that. I want to melt into my own space too! Unfreeze all that is tense and stiff within me!
(Snowdrop is growing out her bangs. For now.)
There is, too, some productive solo work time today: Snowdrop has to write about and illustrate her surroundings. This she likes. And again I just have to smile. On one page, presumably depicting the main room of the farmhouse, she has drawn two items: a couch and a TV, possibly giving the impression that this is the thrust of her time here: couch, TV.
Toward the end of their time here, we do another wonderful nature walk!
True, we don't have the sunshine. And yes, it's pretty close to freezing. None of this appears to bother the kids today. They frolic as if it were June. Well, Sparrow is a little tentative about the running and jumping.
Snowdrop flies with abandon.
(Hiding...)
And then I take them home.
Toward evening Ed and I take a walk in the new development. I look at the new homes, many of them already occupied and decorated for the holidays. Perhaps the joy of moving into a new home will soften the ache of spending time away from the extended family this year. I hope so. Anything to fight the fatigue that I see in so many who just have had it with the virus even though the virus has definitely not had it with the likes of us. Just ask the wife of our friend -- she is a physician on the Covid unit at one of our hospitals.
Thinking tonight of all those who work so hard, so very hard to help those who are so very sick.
With love...
