We have talked about all of these questions, but this week, we decided to explore more. We had some time to kill and it was a spring day. B has an appointment over there for 1.5 hours. Technically, it is enough time to allow me to rush home from work, grab her- speed through rush hour traffic (strangely possible) and then race home to get the other kids, start dinner, wait to hope that Brendan will get home with enough time to race to get her from her appointment, and race home so that dinner isn't too terribly late, and we can eat together.
If any part of that description sounded fun, let me add winter driving conditions and a chaotic parking lot to dissuade you from your positive thoughts. It isn't fun. So Monday, I refused to race. Ok, after the race home, packing the kids and the race to the appointment. Then- we turned on our exploration brains and set out. We found a parking spot and a well worn path right up the base of the hill. Right up. No problem, my dress and heels can handle anything. My 5,4 and 2yo's can do this. We are adventurers,
Quickly, our adventure turned into a nature hike. We found stones, moss, chipmunks. Catapillers, trees, roots. A gosh darn nature hike in the center of the city. They were climbing. They were enjoying. They weren't asking to be carried, for tv time, for anything. They were turning things over, they were asking questions, they were laughing. It isn't a long hike. It isn't glamorous. But we got to the top. We yelled up there for rapunzle. For the witches. We circled the base. We wondered. We played "I spy" to the city skyline. We chased a kids beach ball and returned it. We passed a Catapiller to an artist who was drawing a nature scene. We played follow the leader. We collected 10 different leaves from 10 different trees. We collected trash. We explored four differnet paths to the top. We sang the song that included "marched them up to the top of the hill and the marched them down again." as we did just that.
The funny thing? We did all of that in 30 minutes. Thirty stinking minutes. I have been "planning to take them on more hikes" for about a year now. But it had to be a day with enough time. They needed sturdy walking shoes. I wanted to pack their journals. A snack. Hats. Sunscreen. Bug net. Bandaids. Cameras. countless other reasons why it needed to be perfect. Why I wanted them to love it.
But they did. In their sandles. In the city. Without anything else. Only their memory to capture it. And you know what? I probably had more fun this day. We weren't worried about time. We weren't worried about the moment. We didn't know what we would find or how we would do it. Not only did we have all the fun we were interested in at The Witches Tower, but we stopped at a school to use the potty, explored their playground, went to a new park playground that we had never been to, tried out their potty (they are professional bathroom inspectors), and walked on every meandering path, retaining wall and obstical between each of those events. We spent the time with a purposeless ease, allowing the sun and the spring energy carry us to the next adventure.
I can be often seen declaring in winter that perhaps snow isn't the annoying piece, but car ownership is what makes snow storms difficult. Monday made me reflect that perhaps it isn't toddler dawdling that is annoying, it is our adherence to a schedule, our inflexibility over 5 minutes here or there that causes the stress. We are going to take more time to be less worried about the time on the clock and more time worried about the time in the moment.
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