Why Not

Because it's the first day of summer. Because it's Friday. Because the sun is shining. And because we're girls and rebels and because we don't need a reason, the lil' dude and I visited our favorite coffee shop this morning before work and daycare. Imagine her gorgeous, saucer-sized eyes when I told her that at 7am instead of hollering at her to get dressed, brushed, pottied, and into the entryway in 11 minutes. Mama ... can we really? Can I have my star cookie and lemmelade? Absolutely. Why not. Can we sit inside and not eat in the truck? Absolutely. Why not.

And yeah we were late this morning to our respective places to be. And none of that matters. If I am going to love every single poster, painting, Post-It, or paper with notions of Carpe the Hella-Diem out of life, then I sure as Hell am going to live it and parent it too. Why not.

I want her to remember the spontaneity I have always threatened but never offered. That next time, the coffee shop morning might be the zoo 40 miles from here, or the spa where she can get her first pedicure in an offensive purple color. Or the ear piercing kiosk in the mall, for the love of God, even though she's not yet nine years old, like I had to be in order to be punctured. Why not.

Oh, why the Hell not! So, happy first day of June to you all. Happy light a Carpe-the-freaking-Diem fire under each of you, even if it only lasts the summer. Dip it, taste it, free it!

Preschool Diaries, Vol. 1

This is our first week without preschool. The lil' dude is OK. I couldn't love the stark difference in her first and last days of preschool this year, as indicated above, any more than I do. Day 1, so so SO pumped and Day 100, so so SO sad. What you don't know is, she was fine on her last day, her sadness actually emanated from it being Community Trash Day in our neighborhood, and when she looked to the curb, she saw her "favorite yellow mop" Daddy added to the garbage pile. You know, the broken, plastic mop that has been stowed in our rafters since 2004 ... the one she never set eyes on until that morning. She lost her shit. Now that is a great backstory, am I right? Moving on ....

We loved Preschool each step of the way. This is the little email note her teacher sent on beginnings and ends. I couldn't have written it better. We sent our baby to that school, and picked up our girl. There wasn't a single day she didn't want to go, even if there were days she stripped out of her hoodie when it was 8* out to be in her tiny camisole at pickup; days she would take off her shoes and sit backwards during circle time, and definitely days she refused to share. But, that is life and we all have days like that. She's just learning that early on. Life is about adapting when you think you can't, giving when you're spent, and trying to acknowledge the happy in-betweens.

The lil' dude loved seeing her parents at family day the final day of school. This is truly her excited face for everything in life. It reminds me of her infancy, how she'd always start gnawing on her chubby little hands when obviously excited. I love her classmates around her, in varying states of cooperation, shock, awe, composure. That's 20 four-year-olds for you.

This summer will slow down a bit for our family and I think everyone is ready for that. Less mornings trying to get someplace on time, remembering that flip-flops are not school appropriate, and if it's snack day for us or not. We're going to use each color sidewalk chalk down to its nubs, eat too many ice cream cones, hit all five parks in our neighborhood with regularity, swim 'til we're weary (and pruny!), visit Camp Grandma, bathe the Beagle with the garden hose, cut fresh rhubarb, welcome new "sisters" to our village, finish entire bottles of nail polish, fill up that brat club card at the meat market, and revel in spontaneity.

And try not to think about the Kindergarten that's not happening in September nor the bus that will not be picking her up for a whole other year.

Word {from} Your Mama

Right in the Heart

A few weeks ago, my baby began showering by herself instead of taking baths at night.

I remember giving her her very first bath. In a hot-ass bathroom we steamed up before stripping her down in the middle of December, my own Mama guiding my nerves and incompetence. She screamed her tiny lungs out. I remember propping her up in that blue bathtub I got as a shower present and giving my infant rubber duckies to chew on. I remember as she learned to crawl, how she would book it for the bathroom when she heard the water running, signaling tub time. I remember the countless nights I perched at the edge of that bathtub, soaked to my elbows as my daughter splashed and choked and blinked and splashed some more. I remember how much taking baths, even at age four, soothed her little soul right down no matter the day.

And now she taking showers at her own volition. Her Bestie takes showers, naturally. The idea for her to take them, too, was all her own. At first- I had to facilitate the entire event. It was too much for my girl to handle, the downpour, keeping her eyes open but not full of water, opening shampoo and body wash bottles, and not spending 40 minutes singing. She asked if she could wear sunglasses in the first few times. But now, she's got it figured out. All I have to do is make sure the liner is tucked into the tub and hand her towel over.

That light pink, hooded butterfly towel her Fairy Godmother gave her when she was four weeks old. The one that used to envelope her four times, now stops just above her knobby, bruised, girl knees.

She's as self-sufficient as all get out. She crosses the street solo, requests to stay home when Daddy runs to the corner store for milk, picks out her own clothes, buckles herself into vehicles, and opens the Mac Book and finds her own websites to surf.

But this giving up on baths thing hit Mama where it hurts: right in the heart.

Word {from} Your Mama

Starships

Let's go to the beach, each
Let's go get away
They say, what they gonna say?


My paternal grandparents lived on North Long Lake in my hometown. Every April, as soon as the ice would thaw on their bay ... my two older cousins and I would die waiting for it to be warm enough to swim. I'm pretty sure our first submersion into North Long was in May, if not April, each spring. We couldn't wait. We couldn't feel our toes, or stop chattering our teeth, but there was something magical about that lake and summers spent on the peeling, redwood dock, drinking canned Shasta and eating panfried Sunnies Grandpa helped us catch with cane poles. So each April and May, my nostalgia points toward that beloved, sandy-bottomed lake and I crave the scent of suntan oil and outboard motor gas and beach bonfires and a pile of clean, scratchy Joe Camel swim towels stacked neatly in the boathouse. 


My daughter inherited a lot of things from me- her love and need of bodies of water being one. It's delightful. So it comes as no surprise that as soon as the Robins showed up and the sun stretched into 6pm, and 7pm ... making it bright at 8pm, she assumed summer was here to stay and started wearing her bathing suit on the daily. Fill up my pool! she would chant as I poured coffee, bleary-eyed, at dawn, Fill up my pool! she would chant as I tucked her in at dusk. 


Her pool, the cheap, plastic ribbed-bottomed kind from KMart is still stowed in the shed. The fill up my pool! chant is still omnipresent. So what would any logical four-year-old do but use what resources she had to make her own pool? Filling up Daddy's retro snow sled with freezing cold hose water? In early May?


Yes, baby girl. I know exactly why you couldn't wait.
Exactly. 

60

A very special Happy 60th Birthday to Grandma S. today! Surprise, surprise. We gotcha good!

To the woman who loves lunches with her girlfriends, popcorn, Hot Tamales, her namesake granddaughter, the color purple, margaritas, her family, and the holidays .... happy birthday, we love you!