Leaf Walk

Ella had a Friday off of school last week for conferences. In the morning, we met with her teachers to get our Ella report. We have a little girl who likes to watch everyone in the class. We have to figure out how to get her to focus better because when the teacher’s try to present to her one-on-one, she is easily distracted by any warm body that walks by. I’m not sure how to work on that since we don’t have the large group dynamic at home so there are less distractions around her. But, we’re starting to do a few more projects that require her to do a few steps and we’re getting better at the game Memory. She’s really into I Spy when we’re out and about, so that requires her to scan and focus on an object. We’ll get there. Of course, I took it harder than I probably should have. It’s hard to not project way ahead into her future and start to worry about middle school conferences. But, I have to focus on what we’re doing now and not worry about the future. The now builds our future.

Loran celebrated her conference by stopping at the donut shop and treated us all to donuts. It was nice to have that morning time together without the typical rush of everyone vacating the house. While we enjoying our donuts, Ella was showing quite the interest in Loran’s coffee. He asked if she wanted some and she eagerly accepted his offer. She grabbed that cup of cooled coffee and took a giant gulp. The look on her face was amazingly hilarious! She couldn’t bring herself to swallow and the coffee came dribbling out of the corners of her mouth. It may be awhile before she tries to hit the hard stuff again.

Once Loran had left to work, we took a trip to Costco, one of Ella’s favorite places – she likes to be in charge of the membership card and show it to the employee at the door. They really disliked sitting side by side in the giant cart a few months ago, but now, they do pretty well. I usually have to break up a small cat fight, but it’s tolerable. I even got some encouragement when trying to lift 43 pounds of cat litter into the cart, Ella yells out, “Yeah Mommy! Use your muscles!!” The cutest part happens each trip when we enter the produce section. Ella reminds me that it was there that Lillian first said “banana” – months ago it happened, but that really resonated with Ella, that Lillian made that connection between actual bananas and then said the word, flawlessly. It’s nice to see Ella’s pride in her little sister’s accomplishments. They’re now becoming my little helpers and love to bring our groceries into the house. Piece by piece, they drag the items into the front porch and from the porch it comes piece by piece into the kitchen. They spilled a clamshell of 20 apples all over the porch but the girls found each renegade apple and they all made it to the kitchen.

Once we were home, I decided to push my luck with their good moods and impeding lunch time and take them on a nature walk. It wasn’t a strenuous walk, rather we walked across the street, up my aunt and uncle’s driveway, through their yard along the lake and back up our street. Total mileage covered, approximately .01 miles. Time it took, approximately 30 minutes. We had to stop and inspect leaves, rocks and crabapples. We collected some treasures along the way in our bag for some future art. But the happy girls were falling apart and there were a few temper tantrums and both took turns needing to be scooped off the asphalt when they’d laid down and decided not to move. There is a certain level of frustration in knowing you’re trying to do something fun and somewhat educational with your children, starting out feeling like Mom of the Year and eventually you’re dragging two crabby, crying, boneless bodies down the street with a sack full of dead leaves. Don’t you realize we’re making memories, dangit!?

 

Surrounded by beautiful leaves and Ella would find the brown, crumbly leaves with holes in them and bring them to me to show me how beautiful they are! We did manage to get some colorful ones too, amongst our group of brown beauties.

Once everyone was fed and spirits lifted, the smallest contingent was down for a nap, Ella and I set out to make some beautiful art. I dusted off my inner preschool teacher, shaved some crayons, dug out the wax paper and plugged in my school iron. Ella artfully arranged the leaves on the paper and loved sprinkling the shavings on the paper. She was very careful and deliberate, something she usually isn’t. We’re growing! She was worried the iron would be loud (this is how often she sees an iron being used) and relieved when it wasn’t. She watched carefully as I covered her art with paper and ironed it. When I uncovered her art, she wasn’t sure what to make of what we’d just done, until I held it up to the window. Then, her face lit up and it was “beautiful!” We made two more with our remaining leaves and crayon shavings. Ella helped me hang them up and was excited to show Lillian upon waking. Lily responded with a very excited “WOW!” which meant a lot to Ella.