This weekend we went with two other couples and their sons to Storyland, an amusement park for little kids in New Hampshire. It was a blast! The adults seemed to love it as much as the kids (or maybe I’m just assuming that because I had so much fun).
Minky got to sleep in a big-girl bed and unlike at home she actually stayed put and slept well. She looked cute as a button in a double bed. We might see how she does alone in Sinéad’s room.
Shortly after I dropped Minky off at daycare, I went back for a visit. My students have music first thing in the morning which leaves me with little to do. I guess Minky had other ways she wanted to spend her time, because when I explained why I was there she said:
“Go upstairs, Mommy.”
Big news! Here is the first recognizable drawing we’ve had. It’s a fish. I like the eyes.
They tell us “autumn’s a-comin’,
And soon everything around us will die,
Only a fool believes that he is
Different from the birds in the sky.
All those birds go chasin’
Some better, sunny days,
You can’t hear them singing
Cause they’ve all gone away.”
But this one bird didn’t leave you
It stayed through the wintertime
You can’t hear it sing
But you can hear it as it flies
So don’t you believe them
They’ll destroy you with their lies
They only see the obvious
They see the sun go down but they don’t see it rise
This one bird didn’t leave you
You can hear it as it flies
It’s not very loud
But you can hear it if you try
So don’t you believe them
Yes, it’s true, someday everything dies
We won’t let that defeat us
We can’t hear him sing but we can hear it as it flies
After a dreadfully rainy weekend we woke up to sunshine today. Euphoria. Off we drove with a picnic lunch to Essex where we kayaked to Cranes beach and back.
The highlights of the trip:
A picnic on a nearly deserted beach.
An impromptu science lesson: the hermit crab (somehow Coco heard “Kermit crab” and kept making serious declarations like “I’m not going to drop Kermit crab.”)
Lots of pictures.
Several bird National Geographic moments. We saw cranes, a hawk, turns, storks and about 400 unidentifiable black birds taking flight en masse as we paddled by.
This weekend the second baby, Sinéad, went gone off to college. She moved into the dorm today. It is hard to believe that she is on the road to adulthood now. She was just a tiny girl when I first met her.
It will be very sad not to have Sinéad here on the weekends regularly. Coco especially will miss her sister. Luckily she is close by in Boston, so we have a better chance of seeing her than if she were in another state. Of course, if she really loves being at school we might not see her until Thanksgiving.
Watching children grow up is a delightful experience but bittersweet. The day that they leave home is far in the distance when they are small but before you know it, it arrives. You realize that not only have they grown up but you’ve grown older too. It gets you in the gut, the mingling feelings of happiness for them and sadness for you.
Have a wonderful time at school, Sinéad. We’ll be missing you.
Sinéad riding 42 miles through the 5 boros at Bike New York in May.
