Parent Rinse Repeat

The home of my mother- and father-in-law has been the Easter gathering place for the ever-growing family for the last three decades. In my first years as part of that family my own young children and their young cousins were the joyful recipients of their uncle’s Easter egg hiding. Little plastic eggs filled with candy hidden throughout the front and back yards in obvious and incredibly-not-obvious places (the best hidden eggs would be found the following year. Or later.). 

The ...

Sundown, spring.

A small barefoot girl discovers a watering can in our garage and decides it’s time to help the flowers.  

Muddy feet and happy plants ensue.

Lighting Bug’s 2-year-oldness climbed the next rung.

When we read her favorite nursery rhymes she has started inserting comments to negate the point.

So we end up with classics like the:

“There was (not) an ...

“Is it gonna be OK?”

We watched a particularly exciting kids’ movie last night, with much “danger” to our heroes. Lightning Bug is not used to such fare and curled in between Carol and me, her body tense, genuinely scared, asking “Is it gonna be OK?”

And I flashed back to when I was about her age, watching the Disney animated “Robin Hood” with my mother – her first viewing, my second. In the climax heroic Robin disappears into ...