The prince of spring
To beat the midafternoon blues, Babytidian and I have been tossing the I Spy quilt in the yard and settling where ever it lands. Well, I settle at least. Babytidian never seems to quite settle anywhere anymore these days. He’s happiest when exploring, whether that’s in front of the bathroom cabinets, in the compost bucket, or behind the couch. Being a bit like a baby Cortés, however, he’s mostly conquered all the inside frontiers (except the compost bucket, that’s still gleefully undiscovered territory). And I suspect he gets bored of the stillness of the house. Outside, on the other hand, is always moving. Birds swoop and sway on branches. Old leaves continue to float down while new ones unfurl. And there are always new flowers to see and grab.
On our most recent expedition, we discovered that the clover was blooming. Almost without thinking about it, I began making a clover chain. It was as if something deep in my brain registered all the stimuli, and that was the only acceptable response. Like how you automatically reach out to pet a cat when it brushes against your legs. Or how you lift a flower to you nose even if you know it doesn’t have a scent. It’s just what you do. So, when seated in a blooming clover patch, you make clover chains. In this particular patch, there were just enough flowers to fashion a baby head sized crown. When Babytidian trundled back by, I set the crown on his head. To my very great surprise, my hat-hating baby left it there and continued on his quest to touch the highest heights. Though his regal glory did become a bit lopsided, it remained on his head for a good thirty minutes, not even faltering during a fierce tickle battle with Daddy. I found the crown later that night, finally discarded on the kitchen floor.
