Photo: Izabelle Acheson on Unsplash
She will not elucidate.
She won’t expound.
She won’t make plain.
There is, in her view, absolutely
Nothing she needs to
Explain.
There is the plate.
There are the cookies.
There was her mouth to entertain.
So, what does any of that
Have to do with dinner
Or with waiting for dessert
Again?
Photo: Smadar Halperin-Epshtein
The child gawked at the offers,
Little jaw dropped agape:
Who put Elmo in icing?
Why would anyone want
His best friend to bake?
The boy’s eyes traveled upwards,
Rounded wide at the shelf:
How did Ernie and Bert
End up stuck into cakes?
Can you pull out poor Oscar?
Can Big Bird escape?
This won’t do for my party
I want ice cream instead.
For Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Funny
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
My pink shoes are a mess
But I’m in no distress.
I have been in the dust
For elephants it’s a must.
I’m a fierce one, you see
Will you come play with me?
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Play
Photo: Smadar Halperin-Epshtein
They can hide beneath blankets
They can scoot behind doors
They can crawl under tables.
It’s no challenge at all.
They’re a lion
A princess
A pirate,
A ball.
He has friends you can’t see.
They are there
“They’re just small.”
For The Daily Post
Photo: Daniel Foy
She is deliberate. She takes her time.
Each line is drawn with distinct goal. Each color chosen with remarkable concentration. Each curve labored on in exact determination.
After all, the letters aren’t ‘just’ a prelude to a word expressed. It is none of it ‘just’ idle practice …
It is her name she’s working on, a profound soul-expression.
For The Daily Post
It took a full sixty seconds before she could get hold of her giggles long enough to tell me why she called.
“What’d he do now?” I smiled.
You see, she has a four-year-old and an 18 months old. Both precious. One precocious.
The preschooler omits some speech sounds and makes a salad of most others. He knows what he wants to say (and has much to impart from dawn to evening), but the production message from his brain to mouth muscles doesn’t always come through organized. We’ve been working on improving motor planning and sound production, and he’s been making steady progress. He is a studious little dude and follows instruction well enough, but what he really adores is experimenting: With his father’s shaving cream and his mother’s makeup, with his little brother’s haircut and diaper-rash cream, with words and their meaning.
“I was making him a salad,” the mom hiccupped, still not quite over her laugh-a-thon, “and silly me, I thought I could slip in a tomato.”
I grinned. Silly indeed … This boy loves some vegetables … but he is also the kid who declared “tomatoes are mean because they look like cherries but they taste yucky.”
“So, he takes one look at the plate and shakes his finger at me, saying ‘Mommy, I told you five times already. Why you meddling my dinner?'”
For The Daily Post
As told to me by Mom-of-Three-Under-Six:
“So there we were, on our way to what feels to me like the 100th birthday party of the school year, and possibly the real cause for childhood obesity driven by absolute overload of pizza, cupcakes, sweets and other junk food … (I’m almost — almost — considering serving celery sticks, kale-chips, and wheatgrass juice in my son’s upcoming birthday. What stops me is knowing he’ll need about a decade in therapy to deal with the untimely exodus of little feet and the almost guaranteed desert of future RSVPs to his parties …).
In any event, there we were, cranky baby squirmy in the carrier and the hand of a squirmy already-hyper-on-the-thought-of-sugar preschooler slipping in and out of mine. When we finally arrive, the door is opened by the somewhat stooped and Old-Country dressed grandma (or great-great-grand …) of the birthday boy.
My boy takes one look at her and announces, full lungs: ‘I know you! You are Nanny McPhee!!’
…
I think I need about a decade of therapy.”
For The Daily Post
beyondtherack.com cupcake backpack
She packed a snack, Baby Bear, her rainbow blanket. She stashed a book and some crayons, last week’s (slightly stained and missing a corner but still meaningful) drawing of butterflies and “maybe aliens.”
She added a half-eaten cookie, a seashell, a necklace (you just never known when you might need one). She tried to squeeze in her pillow but it “won’t go.”
She put her shoes on (wrong feet, still fit).
She zipped the bag and pulled her hat on. Splayed the coat on the floor, pushed her arms into the sleeves, and flipped the whole thing over her head just as she’d learned. The coat slid on but tugged the hat off as it went, sending it to lodge someplace between her shoulder blades.
She paused in apprehension, then shrugged, jumped in place … ‘birthed’ the hat from under the hem and victoriously repositioned it on her head.
She nodded in satisfaction, reached for her bag and hoisted a strap over one shoulder. Squirmed and wriggled to get the other arm through the second strap.
“There.” She breathed. She looked around.
Frowned.
Being ready was nice but actually leaving was less enticing. All those hours at preschool before she got to see Mommy again.
Her shoulders slumped. So did the bag. Her lip quivered.
A moment passed. She brightened.
“Mommy!” she called. “Can you pack me a hug?”
For The Daily Post
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