A Kiwi evening

It was one of those gorgeous NC spring days today that literally beckoned you to come outside. (We have to get out while we can before the curse of humidity hits us full force in mid to late May!)

Kylie and I spent almost all afternoon outside. After I folded a load of laundry (by the way, can someone explain to me how such a small family generates so many dirty clothes???) and unloaded the dishwasher (same question, just insert dishes) I asked her if she wanted to go for a walk or in the backyard. She responded with, "Ah wok! I get May-yah lee-sh!" And so the three of us walked. And walked, and walked and walked! Back when I used to run ~ a few years back I had the pipeline dream of running a half marathon ~ I knew the mileage for most of the routes through the neighborhood. What Kylie walked this afternoon was about 1 1/2 miles! And she did it all while proudly holding Maya's leash. When we got home she sucked down a pretty big cup of water and then headed for the back door. Dinner was mostly left-overs, so I figured, "why not?" and we spent some time checking out the garden. Kylie wasn't too impressed with that, most of the plants are still quite small, but she lingered at the raspberries as if she remembered them from last summer...

Speaking of remembering, Ian and I have been wondering out loud lately how the toddler mind works. We've decided that there's lots of information floating around in there and that bits and pieces must cross over each other and suddenly provoke a "flashback memory." For example on our walk today Kylie found a "blow flower." She stopped to blow on it and the seeds floated away. Some landed on Maya's nose and she pointed to Maya's nose and said, "Maya ha noe, no Maya hone." (Maya has a nose, no Maya horn). Then she told me that "Rhinoses ha hone! It wa BIG!" So I asked her if she remembered seeing the rhino at the zoo. And she practically screamed (with glee) "Go zoo wi Dahby! (We met Darby's family at the zoo in March) I see Dahby!" And for the rest of the walk home she kept saying that she wanted to visit Darby...

You know something funny, I was a teacher in the public schools for 10 years and I have now been teaching preschool for 2. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I spend a good deal of time going over letters and the sounds they make. You'd think that I'd do it at home too... One of these days I'm going to start, but for now I'm just letting her take the lead. Ian and I have been watching her and think that she may have a knack for spatial relations, she's really good at puzzles and she's just started becoming interested in this letter set. Not for letter recognition or the sounds they make, but for finding the missing letter ~ she gets so excited when she recognizes the one that fits! (And she knows which ones fit before she actually picks them up and she's always right...)

After dinner the weather reached that perfect spring-time temperature, so we went back outside for another hour. Kylie had a small bowl of vanilla ice cream and I had a WW Heath crunch ice cream bar. When her ice cream was gone she politely requested ~ no, not more ice cream ~ a kiwi. And she was so darn cute eating it that I let her climb up on the table (yes, I know I'll regret that later...) and enjoy.

Now comes the time where I make an apology to Chaucer. I went back and reread my previous post. I added the part about the parsley because in my mind it was a funny story, but I must have been too tired when I was writing. When I read it again it sounded a bit like I was just being grouchy. Let me expand on why the parsley was funny...

I've had a few plants in a large Tupperware tub on the back deck for a few weeks now. Some of them are flowers that I need to figure out where to plant, and some were herbs that I needed an additional planter for. That tub had two verbena plants, two phlox plants, some Mexican heather, and one starter plant each of parsley, rosemary, thyme, and dill. For whatever reason on Monday night when both Chaucer (he comes over to "'play" with Maya during our bible study) and Maya were out back they decided to check out the plants. I can almost hear them talking now, "You get one out."
"No, you pull a plant out."
"I dare you!"
"I triple dog dare you!"
(We all know that no one, human or dog, can stand down from the dreaded triple dog dare...)
And then one of them (actually I have to say that it easily could have been Maya OR Chaucer) dipped their head down into the 35 gallon tub and pulled out a parsley plant. It was obviously not as tasty as they had hoped and it was quickly ~ luckily for the parsley ~ abandoned about 10 feet from the tub. I simply took advantage of a break in the weather on Tuesday to put it along with (sadly the sage wouldn't fit in that planter ~ any Simon and Garfunkel fans out there?) the rosemary and thyme in my new planter. As you can see, (with my kiwi girl in the background) the parsley is going to be just fine!