puddle jumper

I thought when I stopped studying for a few weeks, my writing here would increase, but that hasn’t really happened. I start a post but don’t finish it, and I really don’t have an excuse. I’m just sort of stuck.

I’m picking up new study materials for test #4 on Friday, and so I thought I’d challenge myself to post every day between now and then. Even if it’s small, just something to get me out of this rut I’ve been in.

…..

F starts Kindergarten this week. She’s pretty nervous about it, I think, and pretty emotional about leaving her preschool behind (although her classmates are departing at a rapid pace these days). We went last Thursday morning to meet her teachers and visit her new classroom. She was not enthusiastic about going, but once she was there it was hard to pull her away. She’s been counting down the days until Wednesday since then.

Saturday morning I decided to go to the farmer’s market even though it was raining pretty steadily outside. Actually, that might have been an extra incentive. It’s been a tough, tense week, and that rain Friday night and Saturday morning was like a deep, cleansing breath. I took F with me, and she picked out her “reddest” dress to match her rain boots for the morning. I thought it might be a quick trip there, but after we filled our bags and I grabbed some coffee, she headed over into the empty fountain area and started splashing around in the puddles. I stood under the pavilion listening to the band playing, and I watched her from afar. Sometimes she meandered into the mud and the grass, through the bushes and around the big tree trunks. She ventured pretty far away from me, but it was fairly easy to keep her in my sight, my little girl in red.

We walked back to the car through each puddle, and then she balanced on the edge of a giant hollow tree stump, walking in circles again and again. I just stood there under my umbrella and watched her until she finally jumped off the stump into a nearby puddle and said she was ready to go.

“This has pretty much been the perfect day,” she told me, which is not a bad thing to declare before lunchtime.

We did a few other things that afternoon, including a stop at the “little” Ted Drewes. Since the red dress from the morning was soaked through, she changed into her next reddest outfit and the same boots. Somehow she’s managed to manipulate her own dipped cone order into a double dipped cone, which is a monstrosity and requires scooping the top off into a cup because it’s too large to eat before melting down her arms. She eats the bottom of the cone, then starts on the contents of the cup. It got the best of her this time. We heard her plunk the cup down into the cup holder and declare “That is enough chocolate for me!” We responded with disbelief, so she quickly clarified, “For today.”

Tomorrow is the last morning I’ll drop her off at her old school. I’m not sure I’m ready for this goodbye yet. For eleven years I’ve been starting my days with the same, familiar faces, and for eleven years we’ve been picking up happy, messy children, with dirt under their fingernails and the occasional playground bouquet in their hands. I’m grateful this week for the messiness in my girls’ lives – puddles, playgrounds, chocolate.