The Very Best Pumpkin at the Patch

Two years ago we took Bee to her very first Pumpkin Patch. It's been a really fun tradition, and it doesn't involve much. You go to the pumpkin patch, and you pick the very best pumpkin that you find! On our first trip I remember a sweet baby Bee picking the very biggest pumpkin. This time, we had sweet big kid Bee picking the very smallest pumpkin! 

          

Of course there were so many shapes, sizes, and colors to choose from! Bee took her time to inspect each of them before choosing her favorite.

A difficult task which required a little bit of help...

Before finally making her choice.

When The World is Puddle-Wonderful

One day, we were walking home and caught in the rain. Florida is notorious for spontaneous and unpredicted afternoon showers, after all! Someone ran by with a newpaper over their head and Bee asked why. We exchanged the following:

Well, some people may not like to get wet. Maybe he's on his way to work or to school. 
"On his way to school to learn?"
Maybe. 
"Will I go to school to learn?" 
You can learn a lot without going to school. In fact, you're learning right now, this very moment. There's a lot to learn from walking home in the rain!

So, we didn't talk much more about it and continued on our walk home. I didn't expect that it made a particular impact until today when we were driving home in the rain and it became apparent that she thinks rain is the apotheosis of learning. Since it had been raining all morning we were prepared with our rain coat and rain boots, but I wasn't prepared for such a humbling experience. We pulled into the parking garage of our building and she said something incredible.

"Mom, can I teach you how to learn?"

I said of course. We got out of the car and I simply watched her splash and play, fully taking in my lesson. For all of my curious readers, this is how you learn. Courtesy of a sweet Bee.

Monty the Rhinoceros

"Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination"

This is no ordinary dog bed. Though, I suppose the hand quilted blanket and bowl of popcorn (which is a bowl of peanuts, actually) may have tipped you off to that. This dog bed is the home of something wonderful that has come to visit us.

That something, or someone, is Monty the Rhinoceros. Monty enjoys sleeping in the most inconvenient places, such as the dog's bed, or the sofa, where of course nobody else can sit (including the poor dog)! He always eats a bowl of peanuts for breakfast, and he loves to sing and dance and talk and share stories.


Most importantly, of course, Monty loves this sweet girl. Which is a good thing, because she is the only one who can see him!


Make believe play is a vital component of a child's social and cognitive development with far reaching benefits! It increases language usage, allows a child to express both positive and negative feelings, reduces agression, and provides children with a sort of practice outlet for important social skills such as communication and problem solving. Most of all, it's one of the beginning blocks of building empathy.

Studies have shown  that parents who talk to their children regularly and take time to explain features in nature and social interactions, or who read or tell stories at bedtime seem to be most likely to foster imaginative play. If you're still in the infancy stage and hoping to encourage a strong imagination in childhood I suggest narated walks! One of our favorite things to do was to go on a walk with Bee held close in a sling and narrate everything that happened or that we passed. Sometimes it feels strange to narrate, but it gets much easier and more natural with practice. If you'd like to try, here are some examples of things I'd point out on our walks:

• Did you feel the wind in your hair?
• Look at that quick squirrel running up the tree! I wish I could climb that fast. He went all the way to the top! I wonder what we look like from up there!
• Let's feel this rock, it's small and rough. Feels a little cool on our skin!
• Oh, there's the mail man! Let's say hello, it's so polite to greet people we see. Hello! How are you today?"
• Do you hear those birds singing? What beautiful music!

See that smile? The face of a true, creative and fearless explorer. 

Happy Campers

This summer we loaded up the tent to go camping! It was Bee's first camping trip, and she was very excited because she had heard so much about camping from the tv show Bubble Guppies. In fact, I was surprised to know that she knew so much about it! She was unexpectedly skilled on things like the ingredients to make s'mores, campfires, sleeping under the sky, and most of all: telling spooky stories about BIG FOOT.

"somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience"

There is something very special about being unreachable, even just for one night. It reminded me of the newborn period, when Bee would wake in the night and we'd go into the living room to nurse. Everything was dark and quiet and it just seemed like such a special time for the two of us to be together uninterupted. This was very similar. Just us and her dad. Some time to simply be alone as a family, uninterupted.

Bee took it all in. She inspected the sky, filled her hands with sand, crunched old leaves, collected rocks, and used a broken branch as a magic wand.

Floating in the summer sky...

who knows if the moon's a balloon

go sailing

away and away sailing into a keen 

city which nobody's ever visited

Spring has sprung.

Spring is like a perhaps hand 
(which comes carefully 
out of Nowhere)arranging 
a window,into which people look(while 
people stare 
arranging and changing placing 
carefully there a strange 
thing and a known thing here)and 

changing everything carefully 

spring is like a perhaps 
Hand in a window 
(carefully to 
and fro moving New and 
Old things,while 
people stare carefully 
moving a perhaps 
fraction of flower here placing 
an inch of air there)and 

without breaking anything.







We recently had the pleasure of visiting a farm and shooting Spring themed photos with Heartfelt Photography. Bee has become quite the animal lover and really enjoyed shooting with these sweet baby chicks and ducks. She got to see goats, a horse, dogs, and chickens! I'm very happy to share some of the photos with you!