Time Flies

I can't let April slip by without one more post. Where have the weeks gone? It's hard to believe we're turning the corner on another month and heading shamelessly towards summer. Another spring is slipping by too quickly. My children ran around all weekend in shorts and bare feet aclimating their summer knees and toes. There are jars and butter dishes filled with dirt, leaves, caterpillars and worms all around the outside of the house. On an especially good day, they found a huge woolly worm, all black and fuzzy and prickly. They kept him in a jar showing him off to neighbors and passersby like he was a carnival act. I swear they would've charged a fee to check him out if they could.

This is what has happened to April: finding bugs, cutting grass, planting sunflower seeds, taking walks to the park and getting caught in a spring downpour (we've had to be rescued twice). We've spent hours in the backyard rediscovering plans we laid last summer, "Look the hollyhocks came back," identifying the fuzzy leaves of Black-eyes Susans, and watching the giant leaves and vines emerge from the pumpkins we discarded in the compost last fall. We planted a potato patch, our first one, and the kids check daily to see if any green sprouts have pushed their way through the soil. We're already fantasizing about the new potatoes we'll roast on the grill this summer.

So tomorrow begins May-bring on the flowers from the showers. It's the derby, Cinquo de Mayo, the Indy 500, and the 4th birthday of my little guy. He tells me all the ways to make 4, "three and one make four, Mom, and two plus two make four." But none of it adds up to me. How can 4 years have gone by since I raced with swollen ankles into that hospital, barely making it in time to give birth to my beautiful boy? I'd like to slow down these days, and worry a little less about what's not getting done. Time flies; it races along and it doesn't care who it sweeps up in its path. But we can in our little ways attempt to slow it down. We can spend a Satuday turning over rocks and finding bugs and salamanders; we can stop mulching and throw the ball; and we can run and laugh in the spring rain. Who knows, we might even spot a rainbow.

Let me remember this day

Today was one of those incredibly warm and beautiful spring days when you could literally see and hear the flowers and plants emerging from the soil, the curled tops of hostas peeking through mulch as if to say, "here we are, we made it." It's the beginning of the season where everynight is bath night because the kids are so dirty from playing in the sandbox and digging in the mud, eating popsicles, then digging some more.

And on this glorious day that topped out near 80 degrees, what does my 7 year old want to do, not play, not go to the park, she wants to.....do research. Yes, you heard me. She has started this elaborate poster board project on "Sunflowers" complete with seeds, pictures, drawings, types of of sunflowers, and a poem that is just too cute and funny not to post (with her spelling, of course).

Sunflowers

by Julia Dressing

Sun flowers are very pretty.

They are soft like a kitty.

Sunflowers are very long

almost like a wooden tong.

Sunflowers are very big

Kinda like a twig.

Sunflowers are very yello

Like a yello fello, but just

Sun flowers

Mind you, I'm not complaining, I realize that she could be watching a Mary Kate and Ashley (pre-rehab) video, but I am just a bit taken aback by the urge to research on one's own, as opposed to say, riding your bike or just laying on the grass looking at the clouds. So there she was, her toothless self, still in her school issued gym uniform, taking notes from the Better Homes and Gardens Encyclopedia of Plants, books sprawled out on the living room floor, scissors, tape (a household favorite), and markers all ready for the final assembly. She is all arms and legs, this growing girl of mine, and I have to smile at the furrowed brow and the splash of freckles across her wrinkled up nose as she concentrates. You can almost hear the neurons crackling. "How do you spell mammoth," she calls into the kitchen where I'm seriously considering a dinner of chips and salsa for me, pancakes for the kids. "Mam-moth," I sound out, watching Ian from the kitchen window as he does an upside down move on the monkey bars.

Later as I'm doing the end of the night clean up, I come across her near finished product, and I'm moved by the carefulness she took to tape the sample seeds in place, and by how she searched for just the right words and pictures, and crayon colors to complete her "research." I wish that I'd stopped cleaning and bustling around long enough (or stopped eating chips) to really listen and look at what she was doing. I fought the urge to go into her room and sit on her bed like I did when she was tiny, just to watch her sleep. I'll remember, I told myself. I'll tell her tomorrow how amazing she is, and how amazing her project turned out. I'll remember, I told myself, to pull her onto my lap more often even though her legs reach the floor now. I will remember to giggle more, and worry less. I will remember to hold hands and jump rope. I will remember to sit down on the floor and listen. I will remember; she is a marvel.