Spring in Seattle... aka Rain Pants Optional

In the tradition of my friends Debbie and Debbie, I thought I'd take some time to record the fun stuff and savor the bright side!

On Monday, after an early morning dentist appointment, I said, "Hey, let's go home and pack a lunch and head for the beach," and amazingly the kids said, "Yeah!!!!"

After home, reading of books (lots of books about math right now), sandwich-making, and a momentary relapse ("I wanna stay home! I don't want to go to the beach!" this, from the one who likes to stay), we made it out the door.... to what has become for us The Beach.

Mica proceeded to jump directly into the creek and fill his boots with water but was insistent on staying. Even after two and half hours of throwing rocks, racing sticks, jumping, splashing, log-moving, exploring, and climbing, with a quick break to eat sandwiches on a somewhat soggy log, then heading down the beach, exploring the crevices and cracks, miniature worlds of lichen, moss, fungi, and walking only on logs (the sand was water and the water was lava), and then walking on the breakwater, and then back again on the logs to the creek to pick up all kinds of rocks "to bring to rock club!" and making a dam and being thoroughly soaked, they still were not quite ready to go...

But it was home to dry off and rest and sort and identify our rocks...

And then Orlando headed to M's house for a tea party (M is our neighbor in cohousing, a grandmother and former teacher, and gave tea parties to the kids — the littles on Friday and the bigger ones on Monday). Mica and I rolled around together on the floor and read more books (this time lots of Dr. Seuss, which Mica delights in).

Rom came home and I ran out to have delicious Ethiopian food with a dear friend.... Home past bedtime.

The next day (Tuesday), I knew I wanted to try and settle back in (after a months-long absence it seems) to our somewhat vague routine of Breakfast, Together time, Snack time, Our own time, Outside time. I had an idea of what we might do in together time, but after breakfast Orlando found the natural food dyes I had just finally purchased and they wanted fresh play dough, and that seemed good so we made up two batches. We were going for purple (frosting) and brown (chocolate cake dough) and got a sort of pink-purple and a tan-orange color (which looks pink in these pics). No matter!

The cakes must be baked!!

I had been thinking we would go to Park Day but then by the time we were ready to head out (1 PM), I didn't have the energy to drive all way across town and socialize... good thing I had kept that idea to myself because the kids asked to go to a park near our house that we hadn't been to for months.

By the time we arrived, it had already started to drizzle but the kids were playing on the see-saw and we played "monster" (I am a monster who can't come on the play structure but tries to grab them anyway). I kept wiping off the seats for the kids to sit on but the kids seemed impervious to the wet...

Then it really started to rain and Orlando had the smart idea to go under the play structure and I joined them for our picnic and Orlando spelled all kinds of words with the letter-spinner thing and wanted me to write down all the ones that were "real" words (Tom, nib, nap) and then the ones that were nonsense words (dob, dir) in a separate list so I fished out a receipt and a pen from my sopping wet backpack, and jotted them down.

... and then Orlando wanted to leave and Mica wanted to swing and I wanted to walk in the woods so Orlando went to the car, I pushed Mica on the swing, and Mica assured me that "we will walk in the woods next time, Mama."

Mica swung for a long time and noticed the rain coming down hard and subsiding and coming down hard and caught rain drops with his tongue.

And then it was home again to dry off and time to paint without shirts...

Which all started because Orlando wanted to paint the papier-mâché volcano we started days weeks ago and then they wanted to do watercolors, so more color mixing (Orlando asked for red, blue, yellow, purple, orange, green) and lots of painting and then Papa came home and I left for meditation (notice a pattern here?) and came home after bedtime...

It sure is sweet to see them the next day.