It’s official. I like vacations. I don’t really get tired of the kids being underfoot. I like sleeping in with the kids, cooking for them, and doing projects with them and all this is far, far easier during schedule-less times of the year. Case in point: Christmas break. My children have been off of school / “school” (the second option being the handful of hours Nels attends his co-op during the week) and we just screw off all day in between the work I have to do. They are pretty good at taking care of themselves if I also make sure to put in some solid game time or, now that they’re old enough, include them in chores.
Case in point: devising a children’s mail system (pictures soon). Nels, Sophie, and I have also been practicing jumprope. Sophie jumps and smiles, Nels swings his arm (the full radius he can actually swing it) and screams laughter. Today we got up to twenty jumps sequentially.
Yesterday we discovered Queen’s “Bicycle Race” on the iPod – which if you think about it, is just a perfect children’s song – as we were running our errands for Ralph. The kids were just – entranced. I sometimes forget how cool it is to be a grown-up and show someone something new for their unadulterated reaction (they absolutely, absolutely carry on for this one – in fact now they are currently listening top-volume while jumping on my bed, and yes I confiscated the pick-up stix they were holding while jumping like crazy because I am a good Mama). The three of us also have been pretending – all day long – the three of us are hobgoblins*, living in rags in the forest and stealing things. Mostly food I make (I am apparently a human woman when I make the food, a hobgoblin mommy for all the snuggling and errands we run). They filch blankets and make nests of “lemon leaves and twigs” and twine their arms around me and whisper in my ears.
Reality does occasionally set in. “Blackie horked on my bed,” Sophie tells me, dismayed. We peel off the offending quilt and put on a new sheet. You can hardly get the cats to go outside these days because we have the fire on so much. They lie around like hair-puddles, exhaling hot chum when they yawn and expecting life to be easy.
* Inspired by my current bedside fiction.
