raising a wild child

We love the outdoors. We don't have a lot of wild place to explore, but I want my Little berry to see that the world is beautiful. She notices the littlest things, a tiny bug, a bee on a leaf, a golden flower smashed underfoot. This week we played under the blossoming trees and built tiny houses for imaginary fairies, butterflies, snails.
I know she doesn't understand the concept of "imaginary," but she concentrates so hard helping. She fetches grasses and sticks with precision, plucks tiny violets and pebbles out of the way, waits for an ant to cross before stepping.
Here is where we started:
And when we finished, we had this tiny teepee of twigs:

capped with a lovely golden flower and a million brilliant rays of sun
Waiting to spin a little mystery into the everyday of some unsuspecting soul.

What have you taken the time to build with your child lately? Next time you're in the park, I challenge you to pause, find a small space, and make a fairy home (take pictures and share them with me if you do!)

I wish I were a different kind of thin

It had to happen eventually. Today, Little berry is twenty months and three days old (young) and I am worn thin. She.is.in.to.everything.
She found an old yogurt raisin in some cranny she'd hidden it in last week (oh let be honest, I don't know when she hid it) and stuck it in her diaper, then tried to dig it out. I noticed just in time that she had pooped...
She mocked me while I did crunches and half hearted yoga poses: "huff huff huff (giggle) ahuff huff (collapsing in giggles)" all while poking a Dora the explorer bubble wand in my belly button calling it a boobie. At least she didn't call me fat.
She unfolded all the towells and spilled a liter of sugar water I'd made so we could have lemonade tonight, tried to climb in the fireplace and turned her nose up at all her breakfast, tore up my favorite copy of DOMINO while I loaded the dishes and tried to let a bee in the back door while I vacuumed. I'm trying very hard to be patient but I think- and this is just an idea, that today might be best spent OUTSIDE where there is no simple syrup to spill, dishes to break, bees are already "in"...no yogurt raisins to find and hide in her diaper and at the very worse she will find some lost Easter eggs.
So tell me faithful readers, what do you do on those days that you wish you'd stayed in bed?








or to put it another way, when you feel like you have two left feet, which way do you go?

- mamma pie